Winter’s Tale
12 Seventh night, part 4 — Enslaved
“Use her,” Summer urged.
“Look at her eyes. Do you see how happy it would make her? She is so ready to be defiled,” she half-mocked. Summer knew my desires better than anyone. The point of being controlled was to be used. I wanted Master to use me.
“Whatever Master wishes, I must obey,” I declared, lively and excited, no hint of my sister’s monotone when she had spoken those same words. Though exhilarated, inwardly I was at peace with who I was in a way I had never been before. Since Master deflowered us, my unbridled libido had become a concern. Now, I realised it had prepared me to serve Master’s desire.
Summer’s arousal was more brazen too, getting off on seeing me subjugated, she looked as if she wanted to ravish our beloved in front of me. I could sympathise. The silver shackles about her wrists, quite clear to me now, whether real or not, were a reminder of Master’s dominion over my senses, over us both.
“Oh, do not tell us you have lost all of your fight, slave,” Master said, leaning down to me on my knees. “Tell me you still have your own mind in there, just as you desired.” She poked my mark, sending crackling sexual energy to my quim, shudders through my limbs. The cruelty was back in her voice.
If this was a monumental mistake it was too late to do anything about it now. Should she chose to enslave Summer again, neither of us could stop her. Then where would we be? Twin slaves at her mercy? The idea struck a hot, wet, wicked chord within me. Was this what we wanted all along? Of course, it was. The risk only made it more desirable. Perhaps we would stand side by side under her power on some future evening but tonight we would do this one at a time to learn the truth of our own desires. We could handle that, I told myself.
“As far as I can tell, I am still myself, Master. I am your devoted lover and her sister. But I accept your spell has bested me. I love what it has done. I am your slave. I must obey – ahh,” confessing Master’s control aloud, the magic stored in the mark across my brow injected a decadent reward into my skull, sending sensuous shivers through me. My fetish burrowed ever deeper into my soul. Master and Summer approved, enjoying my capitulation, as did I. Moreover, I enjoyed feeling unashamed. This was who I was. I was proud to be her slave. It was liberating.
“If you command me, I shall resist as best I can; if it pleases you, Master. I know I cannot win but we all enjoy seeing me fail against your will, do we not?” I offered, venturing a little flirtation.
“Oh, you are not failing, sister,” Summer said through her smile. “You are becoming who you have always wanted to be. Your path is… a little different to mine, but it leads us both to the same place. Pleasure slaves kneeling at our lover’s feet.” She turned her attention to Master. “I think Winter does not quite fully realise the whole truth yet, Master. Make her do something she thinks she does not want to do. Something… difficult.”
“Let me see,” Master said, taking my chin in her fingertips and turning my yielding face this way and that, her eyes never leaving mine, searching. Something ed through my mind, like a ripple of wind over long grass. “I think I know the very thing. Slave…” she mustered the beginning of a command and paused to tease me. Could I still fully trust her, now I was enslaved? I had no choice and that felt good. “See your sister no more.”
“No!” shock strangled my cry. All my fears came crashing down upon me. “Summer, stop her! Summer, please!”
“Why do you keep calling me that, Winter? My name is Slave,” Summer said, curious but indifferent to my alarm.
Master snapped her fingers in front of my sister’s face. All thought and light vanished from her eyes. Master had not relinquished her power over her. Summer was under her control all along. Fear sluiced through me.
“What are you doing? Let her go,” I begged, leaping to my feet, hoping to shake my sister from her trance.
Before I could take a full stride, Master uttered a single word. “Stop.”
With that I froze in place as if my body was carved from stone, one arm vainly outstretched to my twin, less than a yard away. Struck dumb I could not even cry out. Somewhere nearby, the call of a tawny owl split the night to be answered by its mate.
When we were very young, we had ed the village children in a chasing game called ‘Ghoul’. If you were touched by a nominated child, the titular ghoul, you were immobilised until someone rescued you with another touch. It had been an exhilarating affair that I had all but forgotten. There I was, an adult caught in a much darker version of the game. When Master exerted her power over me it set my ingrained need to be controlled ablaze, overriding my fears. Currents of pleasure flowed across my body, without betraying even a quiver.
My eyes alone remained mobile, so I tried to track Master as she prowled about me. When she drifted out of view, I fixed them on Summer. My collar began to hum with power once more and I found it harder and harder to keep her in focus. Her features quickly faded to a blur.
“Your problem, dearest Winter, is despite your deep need to be dominated, you are afraid of it. You still want to be in control,” Master said, close behind me. “These are mutually exclusive impulses, the result of not truly knowing yourself. Your sister has given herself over to her desires and found liberation. You seek an ill-considered compromise in your own fulfilment. I know you want to be forced to obey and I am happy to oblige. It shines from your mind as clear as moonlight, I can smell it on your cunt, I taste it in your blood.”
She was right, of course. Her hands slithered over my shoulders as she moved beside me. Her touch still lit up my nerves like a healing flame. “All the pleasure you have found in submitting thus far, and considerably more to come, is yours for the asking. You need only trust me and surrender completely. You trust me, do you not?” Master asked.
“Yes, Master,” I was able to say that and nothing more. Helplessly held in place, despite my outrage at having my sister stolen from my sight, I spoke the truth. I did trust her. I must have lost my mind. Summer was now only an unrecognisable smudge.
“Then trust me now,” Master continued. Resignation grew over me like moss on a statue. “You felt a glimmer of the ecstasy Slave enjoys under my power. Such pleasure can be yours if you stop holding back. Commit as deeply and truly as she. You want the two of you to be one being? Let me do that for you, it is within my power. I love you both. If you truly had any idea of how much I loved you, I fear you would flee from me. I want to give you everything, take you everywhere, show you the whole world. I want to shape you, fuck you, bind you. You understand, yes?”
“Yes, Master,” I replied. Rendered so vulnerable, with the axis of our relationship so clearly skewed towards her, it was nectar to hear Master speak frankly of her feelings towards us. Being so in awe of her, it was often hard to dwell on the softer aspects of our love.
“I have removed my Slave from your vision because it is something you genuinely do not want. Forcing you to do things you want to do is not truly controlling you, is it? Being properly, helplessly, under my power is what you actually crave. It is your deepest desire, yes?” Master laid out the truth of who I had become.
“Yes, Master,” I implored. The ache in my voice told its own tale. Imprisonment in my own body fed into everything I adored about being controlled; my need gathered pace like an avalanche. More than Master’s love, more than her sex, more than her bite, more than anything.
“Can you see your sister?” she enquired.
“No, Master,” I itted. There was nothing where Summer had stood minutes ago, only the stygian forest beyond. If my eyes were seeing her, my brain was not. I knew she must still be right in front of me, but Master’s spell was in command. This brought a smouldering reward all its own, ushering me ever closer to the unending bliss Summer experienced.
“Good,” Master said. My quim clenched at pleasing her. She slid in front of me. Her gorgeous pale face demanded my gaze as she stroked the length of my outstretched arm with a single finger like a knife point. Tilting her head, she smiled.
“You like being helpless. It gets you wet, yes?” Master pondered. The sweetness of my stasis nudged me to the very edge of delirium. I could not tell if Master was making and observation or an edict. Either way, it was true.
“Yesss… Master,” I exhaled, each syllable sung of my escalating need.
“Good slave,” she purred and stroked my hair. Every time she called me that it tightened the harness she wove about my mind. “Since I have your attention, I wish to share an insight.” She edged closer so she was all I could see, then pressed two fingers to each of my temples. I might have flinched if I could, instead I accepted whatever magic she wished to instil. At once, the power effervesced behind my eyes.
“It is clear to me that you prefer Summer leading you into new experiences. Typically, she goes first and tests the waters for you. I have seen it, time and again,” she revealed, cutting to the very core of me. “Why do you think her submission craves mindlessness? Under my power she is free of all responsibility, including her responsibility for you. Make no mistake, she loves you with all her heart and soul, but the onus of your relationship has shaped her desire to be free of all duties when in my thrall. With me she has no burden, save obedience. Alas, she cannot surrender your free will for you.”
Oh, the gut-wrench of having one’s long-held secret exposed. Though we never spoke of it, I had spent our entire lives leaning on Summer. As the more adventurous of us, she led the way in everything we did, and I let her. She always made it safe. No wonder she had found such joy in the erasure of her mind, the loss of all responsibility. In part, I had driven her to our lover’s power for respite from the burden I continuously placed on her. My eyes began to brim at the ission of all that I had taken for granted, all that I had wilfully ignored for my own benefit. Forgive me sister. I love you so much.
“Speak,” Master commanded.
“By the goddess, it is true, Master. I rely on Summer. Have done my whole life,” my voice was returned to speak of my shame, as tears ran down my cheeks. Master deftly licked the tracks of them in two swift, unexpected strokes of her tongue, while her fingers diligently poured magic into my skull. As a ready conduit for her enchantments, my mark grew heavier, my collar colder, my shackles gleamed with power. I felt inebriated, exhilarated, reoriented.
“There is no need to cry, Winter. Slave has never resented the role she plays as your sister. Quite the contrary, she loves it. It fulfils her to act as your guide and guardian,” Master assured, and I could only believe her. My tears staunched. “Now I can perform those roles for both of you. Let me make you happy. I can take all your pain and doubt away. Only you can let go of all that you were and become my slave. It is what your soul is begging for. Tell me you want this.”
“I want this, Master. I do. I want to truly submit. I swear on my sisterhood, I want to be your slave,” I vowed.
“Close your eyes,” she commanded, and I obeyed. “I will take full control of you now.” The line between choice and compulsion was already indistinguishable. The notion that ‘full control’ could be more complete than my present state both inflamed and terrified me.
She released my temples, then eight fingertips drummed across the phases of the moon upon my brow, faster and faster. My heart raced. The collar, the shackles and her fingers were all I could feel, all I could think, spiralling higher and higher until the hammering abruptly stopped. Trapped and blind, even the forest fell silent, waiting, waiting, waiting.
Two fingers, tightly pressed together, slid into my drenched sex. A thumb caressed my clit.
“Perhaps those are my fingers inside you. Perhaps they are your sister’s,” Master said, finding endless ways to shock me, to push me beyond my limits. Incapable of opening my eyes to learn the truth, therein lay the lesson. “It does not matter though, because I control you now. If I wish to place your sister’s fingers inside you, you will accept them. If I wish you to lap her cunt with that marvellous tongue of yours, you will obey.”
That was the final transgression. It broke me. With my resistance shattered there could be no more games, evasions or half-committals to my submission. This was real. I became Master’s creature. Shameful though it may have been, I wanted those fingers to be Summer’s to prove my capitulation. But Master was correct, it did not matter who had entered me to skilfully work my sex. The truth was the same either way. Her control of me was now absolute.
“Yes, Master. I am your slave. I live only to obey,” I confessed. My purest truth was born in that moment, finally understanding what Summer had heralded. I came on those fingers, a breath-taking detonation, though my flesh showed barely a shudder.
As the fingers withdrew, slick with the sticky juices of my submission, my mind settled into my new life. I was Master’s slave. Above all, that alone was paramount. Beneath that, I had a twin. I had a name. I had a love. I had a pact. I had a goddess. I had a family. Beyond that lay the trivia of existence.
“Open your mouth, slave,” Master ordered. I did so without hesitation. Lubricious fingers slid inside. “Lick them clean.”
“Ess, Ahstah,” I confirmed, uncaring of the gibberish the fingers made of my speech. Locked in Dahlk’s blessed darkness, I visualised the owner of the digits I so diligently cleaned.
At first, I saw what I wanted to see; Summer, eyes vacant, mindless, enslaved. If she had made me rapture, my taboo had been broken on the wheel of Master’s will. Then I imagined Master, delight in her eyes, using her plaything as she saw fit. Indulging her whims, her desires, her needs that were my duty to fulfil. Then I saw myself, Master’s slave perfected. Nothing more than a tool of her enslaver, eyes bright with lust, denied the knowledge she had just been made to bring herself off, but perfectly aware of her fate.
Could I have ever truly anticipated this? Finding such fulfilment in being bound to another. At one with my desires, both happy and horrified, my volition now at the whims of our lover, my violation so intoxicating, so alluring, so gratifying. And my use was only just beginning.
The fingers, freshly washed clean, withdrew. The taste of my quim was delicious, rich with subservience, sweet with surrender.
“Does this please you, slave?” Master enquired.
I was taken aback. My needs were entirely fulfilled by my enslavement. Surely how her slave felt was irrelevant? I was now an object, a tool for Master’s use. Yes, I was extremely happy but why did that matter? With my eyes sealed by her command I could not read our beloved’s face. Nonetheless, she had asked a question, so I was duty-bound to respond.
“Yes, Master. I… I have never been happier. My sister spoke the truth; slavery is freedom, pleasure in its purest form. You have made me what I always wanted to be. It is better than I imagined. Why, Master?” I wondered, unsure if I even had the right to ask.
“Because I love you, of course. It pleases my heart that this pleases you. Would you like more, slave?” she asked.
My heart was suddenly crammed with elation at Master’s consideration for her slave. I had somehow lost sight of our love while wallowing in the joys of obedience. All this was happening because of our love.
“Yes, Master,” I answered a little hastily. “Ah... more of what?”
“More of my control,” she said simply.
“More? If that is possible, then yes, please, Master. I beg you. More than anything,” I avidly replied. How could I be more controlled than this? I was dying to find out.
“Open your eyes, slave,” Master commanded. It was my joy to obey, and my body and mind were bathed in instant, rewarding bliss. That augured well.
Master stood before me, implacable like a snow-cloaked mountain, eyes of golden fire focused upon the centre of my brow. Leaning in, she pressed the fingers of one hand hard onto the dark mark that lay there, massaging outward, pushing, kneading, stretching the skin.
I was cold but cared nothing for it, standing as still as the night. With no command, I had no reason to move. Any hopes I might catch sight of my sister in my periphery were dashed. She was still invisible to me. So be it. Since this was Master’s will, I gave up searching. My acceptance of her edict provoked another rewarding surge.
“Slave, attend. Speak while I work,” Master commanded. My heart leapt when I realised she was not talking to me.
“Master is pleased with your submission, sister,” I heard my twin’s voice come from nowhere. I accepted the miraculous without concern, delighted to hear her once more.
“All I am is Master’s puppet and my true name is Slave. The words I speak are placed upon my tongue by my owner. I am unaware I am even speaking. Our beloved enforces my ignorance, and every moment is mindless bliss,” Slave spoke with all the intelligence and ion of her normal voice, the monotone of her earlier oblivious state was absent. Joy soared within me to hear her confess her slavery to Master. I found myself transposing my twin’s name from the one I had used all our lives to her real name: Slave.
“But you, lucky thrall, are aware,” Slave continued. “You know the grip she has on your mind; you feel her leash as true as flesh. All resistance to her power has been taken from you. You cannot oppose her will, though you may struggle when it pleases Master. She is indulgent to her creatures, which is what we are now. You wanted to know what is happening to you, then know your will has been subverted. Do you like it? Is it everything you hoped it would be?”
“Yes,” I breathed. There was not a word for how much I loved it.
“Would you like to always feel this way?” my phantom sister-slave asked.
“Yes,” I replied. The enormity of what I committing to was not lost on me.
“Then rejoice. Our Master labours to make the necessary alterations to your mind permanent.”
Permanent? The revelation crashed into me, caught my breath. My chief concern that once I submitted to Master, she could do anything to me was now laid bare. I had been so afraid of the prospect, but now? Now I knew what slavery felt like. Now I understood how perfectly it suited me. Now what I had craved since whichever forgotten night I had first realised I wanted to be a vampire’s slave was being fulfilled. Permanent? Yes. Want.
“You will be the same woman who woke this morning save henceforth Master will be able to enslave you at will. No need to recast these intricate enchantments that hold you. You shall forever be a willing slave, first and last and always. You live only to obey.”
“I am a slave. I live only to obey,” I repeated, proud to declare the core of my being, ecstatic to learn my transformation would soon be everlasting. Waves of energy burst out from my shackles, collar and mark, suffusing me. The feeling did not subside. Euphoria.
Master worked the centre of my forehead relentlessly. My vision stuttered as my eyes kept momentarily rolling back every thrust of her fingertips.
Everything Slave had said was true. I had never felt anything like it but equally nor had I ever been so sure of anything. My beloved was in my mind. It was wondrous to have my entire being at her whim. My sex trembled and salivated.
“You wanted to know Master’s power, to feel your transformation, to see it happening to you, yes?” Slave’s voice asked.
“Yes,” I confirmed. All my fears perished in the fire of Master’s will.
“Then know this, feel this, see this,” Slave pointedly ordered.
Master’s fingers ceased their probing, splayed wide across my forehead to clamp my skull in her inviolable iron grip that had haunted my private moments all week. Yet, at the same instant her fingers drew together to plunge through the mark of Dahlk, as if it were an aperture made of shadow.
That should have killed me instantly. Clearly it was impossible. Both sensations could not be true. Nonetheless I felt the same hand the gripped my skull work deeper and deeper inside it, forcing greater and greater ecstasies into me, blinding me as my eyes rolled into darkness a final time and stayed there.
Her grip about my forehead, though mighty, was quickly forgotten as the churning inside my brain overwhelmed my senses. Her thrusts made a welcoming quim of my forehead. A persistent belief that Master’s magic had no effect on how I felt about her buckled under her incessant ramming, over and over.
True magical enslavement was sublime, erotic, transfiguring; beyond anything Master had done to me before. She squeezed and moulded my mind, fashioning it into a gauntlet for her to wear. Nothing had ever felt this good, nothing.
There was a caress of her finger inside my head and, with no thought on my part, my left arm raised to shoulder height, fingers flexed, turned over and over like a gypsy dancer. A twitch of her thumb and my right arm gracefully rose to move in sympathy. Lost in wonder, blind and trapped within my own flesh, I felt my limbs gracefully sway and swoop to some hidden melody as if I had trained for years to do so.
With a snap, my hands were done with their dance and dived down to my groin. Fingernails dug through my thatch, teased the periphery of my hungry sex, pulled my labia wide to the cool night air. I was eager for Master to shove my fettered fingers into my cunt. Instead, they slid up over my stomach, cupped my breasts, kneaded firmly, traced my areola and pinched my nipples until I gasped. To think I had feared being made a enger in my own body. Used and helpless, the paradise of being a puppet that Slave had described was now revealed.
My hands were sent up to my neck, guided over my collar, slid under my long blonde plait, picked it apart to let it fall in a wide corona. The earlier chill was only a memory as the heat of my arousal doused me in sweat. My feet shifted and stance widened; my body now more Master’s than mine. Captive, I could only groan my approval.
“Such a delightful slave, so responsive, so worth the wait. But as much as she enjoys calling you slave, that is my name. Your name is Thrall,” Master commanded through my sister’s mouth. Though the voice was Summer’s the tone was unmistakably our beloved’s, radiating power, dripping with desire.
“My name is Thrall. I understand and obey, Master,” I confirmed. My mind quivered, shuffled and reordered itself at Master’s whim until I was Thrall.
Fingers interlaced across the back of my neck and locked in place. Eyes rolled forward, letting me see, but I was immobilised once more.
Flashes of disparate memories and emotions raced through my awareness. I presumed this indicated the tracks of our beloved’s intrusion. She skimmed my thoughts, like turning pages in the book of my mind, phantom fingertips tracing the lines of my life, learning the story of me. My abilities, desires, proclivities, even the mysterious mechanisms by which my brain worked were now clearer to Master than me. It was impossible to tell my own emotions from the impulses her manipulations provoked but every shift within me, engendered greater adoration.
“Master has discovered all our needs, Thrall,” Slave whispered, her breath on my ear. “In fair exchange for our blood, she will fulfil our deepest desires. You need to obey, and to be made to do so. You want your mind sculpted and all your choices removed. You will be her creature whenever she wishes. You will offer no resistance, beautiful half-breed. All true, yes?”
I desperately wanted to scream or nod or anything to affirm my agreement, but my tongue was temporarily bound by Master’s and would not obey me.
“Unn, unn,” I vainly tried to form words from the back of my throat. Master had commanded. I must obey.
“There, there. Fret not, all is well,” my sister murmured. Her pleasure at my dumbstruck state obvious but then, of course, it was actually Master’s delight. “She knows. Your mind is perfectly clear to our owner. Now, be a good thrall and beg our beloved to drink from you.”
My voice was mine again, but only to speak as commanded. I could not conceive of any words but those that would fulfil her wishes. Like all my birthdays coming at once, I experienced an irresistible urge to do exactly as I was told.
“Please, my love, please, Master, please,” I grovelled, “I beg you. Feed from your thrall.”
“Good. Master likes that. Can you feel her pleasure?” my sister asked, and I could. Our minds had begun to merge, her pleasure filled my head, melded with my own, magnifying both. I tried to nod but it was impossible under Master’s grip. “Beg more, Thrall.”
“Please, Master. I want the pain of your kiss and, oh goddess, I want the pleasure. I want it so badly. Take the blood of your slave. It is yours. I carry it so you may sate your thirst.” Extemporising my lust turned Master on. I could feel her arousal swelling and swirling inside my head, writhing against my own, driving us onwards like a well-whipped beast.
“Take it all. Take my life if you desire,” I pleaded, deadly serious. “There would be no better way to die than to have the last of my blood into you. I would do anything for you. I love you. I am forever yours.”
As the fervour of my words fed Master’s ecstasy, she fed my own, taking me to the brink yet again. My hands, hers entirely, moved to my collar and with a click I heard its removal, its magic spent, delivered into me. With a thud I heard it fall to earth.
Master’s free hand slipped into her quim. It felt as if it were my own fingertips working her folds. Abandoning Slave as her mouthpiece, she spoke from her own lips to push me to the edge. “I hold you enslaved. Shall I let you go?”
“Never.”
I had not realised how close to rapture she was until our shared orgasmic howls robbed me of the chance to beg further.
Master cried, “Oh, slave, I want you! I want your life! I want your death!”
A streak of red lightning across my mind instantly made clear her need to kill us, her hunger for more than blood. Was I about to die? Cutting through the turmoil of her orgasm in my mind came a vision of our ending, a white doom streaked in scarlet. Then came Master’s crushing remorse, an aching struggle to regain composure and take back her words.
“Curse me for a corpse! You precious pact-sisters make my tongue betray me. You are so close now. I will not risk polluting your progress. Forget!” she screamed with some considerable strain, forcing order through the chaos of our ecstasy.
A deft flutter of her churning fingers caught the vision of death even before it could be pressed into the book of my memory. With a clenched fist, she crushed it into dust which then scattered across the maelstrom of my mind. I was left with only the thrilling impression that she had taken something important from me but ignorant of what it was.
Adrift in near constant rapture, this new violation drew a grateful moan from my depths. I was only what pleased her, nothing more. Every reshaping of my mind made every fibre of my being adore every aspect of her control.
“You like my fingers inside you, Thrall?” Master teased, moving to safer lustful territory as if her murderous slip of the tongue had never happened.
“Yes, Master. Your fingers, your fangs, your mind,” I begged.
“I know. What will you give me for them?” she demanded.
“Anything!” I cried. I was so close, so hot, ready to explode.
“Your soul?” Master demanded.
“Yes, Master. Yes!” I offered her everything.
“Good Thrall,” she breathed.
With her impossible hand buried deep in my brow, she tilted my head to expose my neck and brought forth her beautiful, wicked fangs. As I ired them, wide-eyed, she buried her fingers in my quim, instantly bringing me to orgasm. When my cry of rapturous surrender reached its apex it was cut short as she bit deep into the very wound she made last night, catching me mid-orgasm.
There was no terror this time. I was beyond such folly. The intense initial pain was now welcomed as a friend heralding the multiplication of my ecstasy to monstrous proportions, wracking my helpless body as she drank, ramming her fingers into me again and again. The parameters of my existence were torn asunder. I was on fire, I froze in ice, I was darkness and light. I was blood and life, death and despair. Whoever I once was died on her teeth. I was Thrall.
Lost in blood, a clarity came upon me. Now that she had made my free will her plaything, the feeding took on a deeper meaning, a grander purpose. In some distant delirium beyond the ocean of pleasure that flooded from my bite, I understood what it was doing to me. The purest ecstasy released in every drop of blood she took made me want to give more of myself to her. As my madness grew, an indifference to my own survival took hold, I resolved to find some way, some heathen spell or ritual, whatever it took, to give Master my soul. I had nothing more to give, but it was hers all the same.
As I drowned in the depths of her blessed agonising kiss, my corpse floated on a river of blood into Dahlk’s waiting arms. Sacred darkness consumed all.
“Open your eyes and see, Thrall,” Master’s words hauled me back from oblivion.
I breathed deep, much surprised that I still could. My heartbeat throbbed against the bite; my blood longing to be free. The wound burned like the coals of a hearth fire pressed into flesh, the pain an exquisite reminder of my purpose. My body stood rigid, the bridle of Master’s will welded to my mind. Our merciful mistress had spared me. Against all expectation, I lived.
Relief washed over me to see Slave again, dead ahead; mirroring me save for the happy vacancy of her eyes. Her collar was absent but, in its place, our beloved owner had one arm slung around her neck, her wolfish smile in full effect. Though they were three paces from me, I felt Master’s hand linger within my skull.
“I deem this worthy of your witness. Consider why,” Master demanded. She slipped her arm from Slave’s neck down to her waist, then stepped sideways behind her, toppling my sister off-balance but catching her like a rag doll, slanted across her. Slave’s head lolled to one side exposing her throat. Master bared her pristine fangs and for a moment my sense memory felt them in my wound. She paused to lock eyes with mine as she sank into my sister’s throat to drink.
This time Master’s gaze told a new story. On all previous occasions she had shown me what she ached to do to me whenever she had her way with my sister. Though there was love and need and ion in her eyes, now there was supremacy. But I saw the lesson too. I did not need Summer to lead me into whatever Master wished to show us. We were hers now and that matter was settled. We would go wherever she led, accept whatever she chose, give anything she desired.
Despite the tumultuous bliss of our beloved’s bloody kiss, Slave did not react at all. Nor could I. The sublime beauty of the feeding, an erotic tableau keyed to everything I found arousing, provoked insistent desires to touch myself, to show some reaction to it, to at least moan in pleasure at the use of my twin. All were denied to me. There could be no more perfect demonstration of the absolute control she held over us both.
As Master withdrew, no wasted blood trickled from the punctures. Three licks of Slave’s neck were all the encouragement her obedient flesh required to seal the wounds more efficiently than last night. She had bitten the same four spots precisely, the wounds now more conspicuous. Mine must have been identical. I hoped so.
Returned to an upright position, my sister stiffened at once, locked in place, her body’s tension in contrast to the docility of her eyes.
“There. Both of you have what you want. Perfectly controlled, yes?” she pontificated. I had never given much thought to what perfection was before Master came into our lives but now I knew. Being controlled by our beloved was completely, unquestionably perfect.
“Yes, your control is perfect; we live only to obey,” we found ourselves saying in unison; no thought but the words on our tongues.
“You, sweet Summer, a delightful, mindless Slave. You, dear Winter, an eager, willing Thrall,” dark, sexual energy filled every word. Those seasonal names she used seemed superfluous.
“We are your slaves,” we responded. “I am Slave,” my sister spoke her true name. “I am Thrall,” I spoke mine.
“Mine forever, yes?” her delight undisguised as she paced between us.
“Yes, yours forever,” we chanted.
“And you would do anything for me, yes?” Master emphasised the word ‘anything’ with husky relish, keen to squeeze ever greater declarations of her dominance from our obedient mouths.
“Yes, we live only to obey,” our mantra, our true song, our purest reason for existing.
“You would bleed for me, yes,” she demanded.
“Yes, we live only to obey,” we answered. Our blood was now forever at her disposal.
“Kill for me?” pushing our transgression further than we ever imagined.
“Yes, we live only to obey,” we echoed with as little compunction as found in a killer’s dagger.
“Wonderful!” Master exalted.
“We obey, we obey, we obey!” our battle cry, our submission, our perfection.
“That will do for tonight,” she concluded.
With a snap of her fingers the impregnable grip she held over my mind was released, all compulsion left me, the rigid tension of my stance vanished, and I seemed to be mistress of myself once more. Summer too, as life quickly returned to her eyes. My gaze was drawn to her fresh wound. It made me glad.
On instinct I tentatively reached for my forehead, half expecting to find a hole. Only the same smooth flesh over bone as ever, chilled by the magic of my mark, nothing more. Further exploration discovered five tender patches above my hairline which suggested the formidable grip of my lover’s fingers. The images of her hand inside my skull must have been fantasy, some compelled delusion perhaps, but I was beyond doubting our beloved’s power.
Moments before, our mindset had been cast in adamantine. Now her intrusion was gone, it felt unnatural not to have her camped within my mind. Though diminished by her absence, wicked grins communicated our dark delight better than words. Our beloved had no need to let us go, we were completely at her mercy, but she liberated us all the same. It only made us love her more. Just like everything else she did.
My shivers drew a concerned nod from Master permitting me to quickly don my clothes. Soon dressed, I drew my cloak tight and she took me in her arms to cuddle with heat stolen from our blood.
“You let us go,” I said, suddenly aware of how tired I sounded.
“Of course. You did not agree to be my slaves forever, just for the night, yes?” Master explained. I rather thought perpetuity was exactly what we had just consented to. Perhaps not.
“You did not have to do that. It was so lovely to be yours. In here,” Slave said, tapping her head, sounding as tired as me.
“We may do it all again soon if you wish. It will be easier next time, now you have been properly enchanted,” Master casually commented.
“Are your spells still upon us?” I wondered, hoping they were.
“Of course. Your blood is in me, my magic is in you. Though, sadly, your blood will fade from me in time, my bond will be with you always. Though any lingering effects of tonight will with the first light of dawn,” Master declared. I did not want anything she had done to me to fade.
“Thank you, Master,” Slave was quick to respond.
“You may call me Layla,” Master permitted.
Hearing her name was like waking up from a dream. The transposition of Layla to Master had become so smooth I had ceased to even it. Now it was back where it had always been, though I still wanted to call her Master. There was a power in choosing to do so, in declaring what I wanted her to be.
“So, the bond is with us always? You could enslave us again?” I asked, wanting certainty, trying not to sound desperate.
“Of course, my love. If that is your desire,” Layla said.
“Thank you… Master,” I risked, which made her smile.
The three of us embraced, more entangled than ever, now in each other’s minds as much as our hearts. Our farewells kisses were brief essays on how much we would miss each other, but we parted and watched her walk into the night as was now our custom.
Making our way back to the cabin, we tried to reacquaint ourselves with our fatigued minds and bodies. Our wounds were deep, they pulsed with every step, every breath, every heartbeat. We loved that.
Running my fingers over the mark of Dahlk, I tried to discern how it differed from earlier when it brimmed with our beloved’s magic. I found no answers, only a strange comfort in the distorted memories of her manipulations. There was a lot to process from such an eventful night, but we were cold, drained and exhausted.
“Did that all really happen?” my sister whispered as we climbed into bed.
“Yes. I think it did. All of it,” I whispered back, weak but elated.
“Good night, Thrall,” Slave said.
“Good night, Slave,” I said and fell into Dahlk’s arms at once.