Worst Case Scenario

"You've got mazy eyes, Chloe girl." Chloe honestly wasn't sure what shocked her more when she walked into her apartment-the words, or the voice that spoke them. She honestly never thought she would hear from Gillian at all after the last time they saw each other, and she sure as hell didn't know that Gillian still had a key to their place. That alone would have left Chloe rooted to the spot. But those words...

"Isn't that right?" Gillian asked. It didn't sound like a question the way she said it, though. Gillian had a way of making even the simplest statements into gloating, and her voice was practically dripping with smug triumph now. "I heard you had mazy eyes, but I had to see for myself."

Chloe turned, swiveling on one foot as if she was mounted on a dowel, and there she was. Gillian Kirke. She looked a little older, perhaps; her cheeks didn't look quite so baby-faced anymore, and she had given in to her butch tendencies and chopped most of her dark hair off. What was left looked almost silver when the light caught it. But she still had those same gray eyes, the color of deep glacial ice. Chloe realized she was looking much closer at those eyes now.

Gillian smiled at her. Her big round cheeks always made her smiles look so innocent; even now, when her words made Chloe's blood run cold in her veins, she looked like she just wanted to surprise her old lover with a friendly hello. But then she spoke again, shattering the illusion. "Oh, my," she said. "Those do look like mazy eyes. I wonder why you've got such mazy eyes, Chloe girl. Do you want to tell me?"

Chloe blinked. It took a conscious effort. She blinked again, forcing her eyelids to open and shut, reminding herself the whole time that Gillian wasn't Auberon. Those words didn't belong to her. They belonged to Chloe, and Chloe alone. "Stop saying that," she said, forcing her speech to come out as deliberate instead of merely slow, "and get the fuck out of my place."

Gillian snorted. "Make me, mazy eyes." Chloe felt the words like a physical force, like a blow smacking her brain without ever actually touching her head. She caught herself swaying, and forced her body to walk forward to where Gillian sat on the couch. She could tell Gillian noticed the effect it had on her. Those ice-gray eyes were wide, excited, gleaming with fascination.

Chloe took a swing at her, but her reflexes were sluggish and Gillian moved out of the way easily. She grabbed Chloe's wrist, tugging her off-balance so that Chloe toppled into Gillian's lap. "Now, is that any way to greet an old girlfriend, mazy eyes?"

Chloe struggled to get up, but it felt like she was fighting two people at once. Gillian's arms pressed down on her, but Chloe knew she could have pushed her off if not for the feeling of lassitude that made her muscles feel like rubber and whispered in her tired ears that it would be just as easy to let go and relax onto the soft cushions. And through it all, one question kept tugging away at her brain, looming over everything else until she couldn't stop herself from letting it slip out. "How...how did you find out?" she whimpered.

From the speed of her response, it was clear that Gillian wanted her to know. Wanted, hell. The smug bitch was probably more excited about telling Chloe how she found Chloe's secret trance trigger than she was about using it on her. "You know how you met your...your whatever-he-is out at that kink con in New Hampshire a few months back?"

"He's my Master," Chloe said stubbornly, leaning on her thoughts of Auberon like they were a cane. She knew Gillian was just being pissy about her submitting to a guy-she never handled Chloe's bisexuality very well, even when they were officially monogamous. It was one of the million simmering issues that made the break-up so nasty when Gillian finally got offered that research fellowship in London. Gillian didn't like to lose to anyone, even the city of San Francisco.

"Oh, mazy eyes," Gillian said, glaring down at Chloe with a blazing intensity in her gaze. "We both know you mean Mistress, don't you? Mistress, mazy eyes. Mistress, mazy eyes. Mistress, mazy eyes." She repeated the words until Chloe stared back at her glassily, lips silently mouthing along in a confused half-recitation. Then, just as abruptly, she continued her story.

"Anyway, one of the other women there was from London. I don't know if you remember her, her name was Janet but she apparently goes as 'Lullabae' online." Chloe nodded as an image of a frizzy redhead with enormous breasts surfaced out of the fog of Gillian's repeated triggers. "Well, she and I have been seeing each other casually-nothing serious, don't worry, just a little flogger time on Tuesday nights after work." Chloe tried to find the words to explain to Gillian that one of the wonderful things about being someone's ex was that you no longer had to give a damn about who they were fucking, but nothing clever enough to repeat came to mind.

Besides, she was apparently very wrong about that.

"And when she got back," Gillian continued, "she was so excited that she just had to tell me about the things she saw. And when she described this skinny blonde girl with a mermaid tattoo that curled all the way around her leg, staring up at some boring guy and getting the most beautiful mazy eyes, well...I had to find out a little more, didn't I?"

Chloe whimpered, and not just because Gillian reached down and teased Chloe's nipples through her shirt as she triggered Chloe again. She thought she was being so careful with Auberon-even when they posted the logs of their chats, because fuck did it make Chloe hot thinking of all those people out there on the Internet masturbating and wishing they were her, they were always so careful to redact her triggers. They never let anyone see her face in the pictures she posted when she played with her tits on command. Even when she posted shots of her pussy, she was careful not to let her tattoo show.

"I like the new nickname, by the way," Gillian said, still playing with Chloe's breasts. "You've developed quite a...body of work under that name, haven't you?" Of course it wouldn't have fooled Gillian. She knew every inch of Chloe's body, every last dimple and curve. But Gillian wasn't supposed to know about 'Teazd2Oblivion', that was the whole point! Chloe felt a sudden urge to strangle Lullabae, but holding onto the anger in the face of Gillian's teasing touches and the vague, drifting pleasure of trance proved to be impossible.

"And once I knew it was you, mazy eyes," Gillian continued, her fingers now creeping down between Chloe's legs to press against the crotch of her jeans, "it wasn't that hard to get Janet to tell me every hot little detail of the session she watched. It really got her motor racing to play with her wet, hot, horny little cunt while she described you falling into a deep, compliant state of helpless hypnosis."

Chloe tried to stop the tiny squeak at the base of her throat, but it escaped anyway. Whatever their problems as a couple, Gillian had always been amazing in bed, and she hadn't forgotten a single one of Chloe's erogenous zones in their two years apart. And she was mimicking Auberon's techniques, borrowing his phrasing and even his cadence as well as his triggers. Chloe's thoughts blurred and shifted as the two people became increasingly indistinguishable to her foggy mind.

Gillian noticed. Her fingers slipped expertly into Chloe's waistband, undoing her fly with practiced ease and sliding into Chloe's wet panties to tease her dripping cunt. "I'm sure you can guess what happened next, mazy eyes. Janet was very observant that day. You made a big impression on her. And she spent a lot of time reminiscing about it, too. She remembered every single word you said...and every single word that Whosit said, too. A Mistress would be far more careful, mazy eyes."

Chloe choked back a gasp as Gillian's probing fingers found her clit. She struggled to remember what had caused the flash of anger, just a moment ago, but the thought melted like sticky syrup and trickled out between her legs. Gillian always knew exactly how to get Chloe so wet, so hazy with arousal that she forgot why she was supposed to be mad and gave in to the pleasure. If there was a single person in the world who should not be handed another way to melt Chloe's fuzzy brain into a sticky, wet mess of desire, it would be Gillian. "Fuck," Chloe groaned out, unsure whether she was begging for more or just describing her frustration.

"That's it, mazy eyes," Gillian said, taking the decision away from her. "Just let go, just slip away into that deep pleasure as you stare at me with your pretty, mazy eyes and sink deeper into trance for me. This is what you always wanted, wasn't it? To stop thinking and let me tell you exactly what to do. All those silly arguments we had, they were just your way of trying to push me into switching off those boring thoughts of yours and make you my good, horny little Chloe girl."

Chloe tried to resist, to tell Gillian that no, that was exactly why their relationship was a slow-motion trainwreck in the first place, because every time Chloe didn't agree with her Gillian took it as a challenge to her dominance and decided to try to fuck it out of her, and every time Chloe gave up and let her it just buried their problems deeper until they had all sorts of deep-seated trust issues and it was easier just to wait it out until Gillian left the fucking country than work all their shit out...

But Gillian just kept saying, "Say yes, mazy eyes," over and over and over again until the words Chloe grasped for dissolved into thick, heady fog that swamped her mind and stilled her thoughts until only one remained.

She said it. "Yes."

"Good girl," Gillian said. "Cum for me, mazy eyes." With a wail of sleepy ecstasy, Chloe felt her body helplessly comply.

Once her climax finally faded into a dreamy afterglow, Chloe found that her resistance didn't want to return at all. The release of orgasm had intertwined with the repeated triggers and hypnotic language to bind her mind into relaxed submission, and Chloe felt too weak to break free. When Gillian sat her up, she sagged onto the couch cushions and let her eyes sink almost entirely shut as she waited passively for Gillian to tell her what to do.

Gillian stood up, and pulled Chloe to her feet as well. "Come on, mazy eyes," she said, helping Chloe zip up her fly. "I've got your things all packed. There's some paperwork for you to sign before we head to the airport, but I don't think you'll find it at all hard to write your name on anything I put in front of you. Will you, mazy eyes?"

"I...I...airport?" Chloe struggled to fit the word into her well-fucked brain, but it didn't make sense. She couldn't think of anywhere she was going. Admittedly, she couldn't think of much of anything at all, except for how good she felt right now, but... "Airport?"

"Well of course, silly!" Gillian said, giving her a peck on the cheek and leading her back into the hallway. Sure enough, Chloe saw a suitcase there that had entirely slipped her notice when she was busy confronting her very own hypnosis-based worst case scenario. "After I found out your little secret, well...it made me realize just how much I missed you. And once I knew I could get you back, I had to do something about it. I picked up your visa application where I left it off, I filed some marriage papers with the justice of the peace, and I bought a round-trip ticket for me and a one-way ticket for you. Everything's all ready, once you sign the papers making you mine."

She smiled. Even Gillian couldn't make this one look innocent. "My loving wife, that is. Doesn't that sound good, mazy eyes?"

Chloe sighed. As deep as she was, as hazy and lost as she was in the fog of trance and afterglow, she could still feel something in the core of her mind struggling to resist. She opened her mouth, trying desperately to fight off her hypnotic programming and reassert herself before Gillian dragged her off to England, before Gillian had all the time in the world to deepen Chloe's conditioning into total surrender...

"Say yes, mazy eyes."

"...yes." Chloe's stare became fixed and glassy. She picked up the suitcase. With slow, somnambulistic ease, she allowed Gillian to walk her out her own front door and out to the taxi that waited for them both.

THE END