Apex Predator Ch. 03

DISCLAIMER: as always, all characters depicted in this story are adults over the age of 18.

I find that you keep your head held higher, when you walk around with freshly-licked boots.

I make sure to, whenever I have the opportunity. The sight of my former rival, my arch-nemesis, bowing and scraping before me to polish my boots with the tongue she once used to belittle me, simply never gets old. Neither does the catharsis of putting a privileged bitch like her in her place.

She was born with a silver spoon in her mouth. Now, as an adult, it's my toes she's having to cradle between her lips. What a lovely mental image.

I shudder, my mind filled once again with visions of Margaret's progressive and inexorable breakdown. The way her puppy dog eyes look up at any girl who purchases her services at the Wheel. The way her body arches beneath mine when I edge her for hour after hour, cruelly teasing, denying...

God. The sheer thrill, the adrenaline rush, the intoxicating nature of what we're doing, is really hard to resist. It feels almost feverish, it gives me tunnel vision. I almost spend more time thinking about her than I do my own studies, sometimes.

Sometimes.

My booted footsteps ring once more across the empty, vast spaces of the main hall. I remember when I came here shortly before the midterms. Then as now, late at night, the place is deserted, which makes its grandeur feel all the more alien.

It's weird how things seem to have come full circle, since then. I was wallowing in misery and failure, then. But now, with graduation day approaching, as I walk across the hall with the reflective surface of my shiny boots beneath me, it is my name up there, at the very top of the screen. As it bloody should be.

Elizabeth is right behind me, but I have to read down several lines to even find Margaret's name. A sadistic smile tugs at the corner of my lips. She's spiralling ever downward, and it's no wonder. She has quickly become the single most purchasable benefit at the Wheel, and well...

Let's just say she has very little time for studying, these days. It was high time her mouth and her limited intelligence were put to better uses, I suppose. Same for her supple body, seemingly sculpted for submission, so open, receptive, accessible, inviting...

I shake my head, snapping myself out of the reverie. The Wheel awaits me.

During the first semester, I used to wonder why the benefits shelves seemed always half-empty. Now I know, of course. With the unlocking of sexual forfeits after the midterm ceremony, the products on offer have multiplied at dizzying speed. Being top girl does have certain privileges, because I've never been subject to any of them--it would be very expensive to target me, and after what happens to Margaret, few people are eager to try their luck with Ragnaring debt.

Of course, sexual forfeits now also accompany non-sexual benefits. Poor Renata bought a 35% grade boost last week, and she's been stuck serving as ponygirl to her nearest competitor ever since--I think for another ten days, if I remember correctly. She does seem to be getting into it, though.

It's funny how things always seem to turn out that way, in this place.

Margaret is certainly getting a crash course in it. Her price is quite cheap, and falling by the day. I've stopped trying to keep count of how many girls have bought time with her, or specific humiliations to degrade her, but it's come to utterly dominate her experience here at Ragnaring. The effects on her overall demeanour have been quite... transformative.

I still avoid the Wheel, for the most part. Unlike the majority of the girls here, I sort of have... privileged access to Margaret. I snap my fingers and she immediately drops to her knees, grovelling, licking, kissing, sucking, begging for release...

I don't know. Maybe she's starting to... like me. Or it's just that I was the one who broke her first. Still, I obviously enjoy the free ride, literally and metaphorically.

But on special occasions, I do splurge on the Wheel a little, to make sure we have a clear day all to ourselves, or that I get to do special things to her... and right now, I have one in mind. I pluck the envelope with trembling fingers, telling myself that maybe this isn't the wisest thing I've ever done... but it's hard to stick to my usual, overly cautious self, when the fruits on offer are so sweet...

As always, Cindy averts her eyes when I approach her counter with an envelope in hand. On the other hand, she doesn't even need to check what it is I'm buying--it's obvious at this point. She rings it in without even needing to check the envelope, and just like that, I'm out the store without a word.

My mind starts to race with all the possibilities for the long, excruciatingly interminable day I have planned for my personal, sapphic, enthralled, little peon of a pet... and it absorbs me so much, that when I notice the girl standing next to me, it nearly gives me a heart attack.

"Woah, Elizabeth," I say, taking a step back after nearly running into her. "Sorry, I didn't see you."

"That's no trouble," she says, with a polite smile that doesn't quite reach her lips. "Your mind elsewhere?" Her eyes fall theatrically to the envelope in my hand. "Got yourself something fun?"

I study her for a moment. She always looks so... composed. Truly, I've never gotten a hint of hostility from her, but I still feel uneasy around her. Like an instinctual, primordial dislike. I'd really rather focus on Margaret than try to navigate this conversation with my nearest rival in the rankings, though.

"Yep," I say, hurrying past her. "Gotta go!"

"To be sure," Elizabeth says from behind me, her voice dropping so low that I can barely hear the follow-up. "Wouldn't want to keep you..."

* * *

Margaret

Truth hunts beneath the waves.

I've always fancied myself a predator, until my downfall. But it's only in the dizzying, never-ending spiral of whoredom that followed that I'm starting to see reality: there is nothing more dangerous than pure, unadulterated truth.

The truth about who we are, what we'd do when presented with the right incentives, what we would allow ourselves to become. It is a secretive thing, stalking the blackness of the depths like some unfathomable hunter from the abyss. It is truth with the power to remake us, the power to unveil us...

And the power to destroy us.

I gulp in air, desperately coughing as precious oxygen flows down into my lungs. It's like I myself have just come up from air after being prey to truth, beneath the waves, in the pitch black of my own mind.

The burning sensation in my throat and chest, my blurry vision from my tears, they pale in comparison to the gratitude I feel, at being finally allowed to breathe.

Finally, my vision clears. In the penumbra of Fiona's bedroom, she looks like a vision, something out of a half-forgotten dream. Beautiful and triumphant, looming over me, breathing heavily, her weight grounding me in my place beneath her.

Her hair obscures her face, but I don't need to see her features clearly to know she's smirking at me.

Can I blame her? She's looming over me, her knees firmly planted on either side of my head. The sheets beneath us are soiled with our sweat and her juices--as is my face. Here I am, coughing and sputtering, after being ridden like

I'm little more than her masturbatory aid for so long that the sun outside has begun to dip beneath the horizon.

And through it all, the room has been buzzing to the sound of the vibrating egg, stimulating me, teasing me, ramping me up closer and closer to the edge, but never close enough...

Back when I thought of myself as Queen Margaret, I had an unabashedly transactional view of the world. I thought that was how the game was played, and that the system was designed to allow people like my family, like me, to stay ahead.

As such, it feels particularly devastating for me to suddenly become, not just a maid, but a thing. A product, meant to satisfy and gratify and entertain, and a cheap one, to boot.

I've embraced this new role with open arms. Over the past six months, I've had my face shoved in between the thighs of most girls at Ragnaring, and that's just for starters. I've had to lick boots, to suck the sweat out of dirty sneakers and socks, to provide tongue baths for each proffered foot at a snap of fingers.

I've been bound and spat on, slapped and collared, tied to a cross naked and gagged just outside the Wheel, with the gargantuan screen towering above me, freely open and available to any and all girls that might be passing by. Even headmistress Polina took some time to toy with me, that morning.

I once thought her and I were peers, kins, women of the world who understood how things really worked. That there was an unspoken understanding between us. But I whimpered and begged and squirmed like an unredeemable slut under her touch, all the same.

My hypnotic conditioning keeps tightening around me, like the crushing coils of a constrictor snake. Each new humiliation unlocks something new within me. I want to resist this, I do, I want to feel like myself again, Queen Margaret, heiress, scion, a girl burning bright with the fire of ambition.

But then I think of Fiona, sitting unceremoniously on my face, placing her sex on my nose and lips in a casual display of ownership, a wordless declaration that she's the better woman. And as she smothers me, she's also snuffing out that fire, too. Ending my pretensions, crushing my delusions of grandeur, relegating me to a role where my value is not self-determined... but dictated by how well I can please my betters. And her most of all.

The worst part, though?

The worst part is that throughout all this time... I've never been allowed to cum. Absurdly, I wonder what permission would leave me more grateful... permission to breathe, or to finally get release again.

The last time I got to cum, I was still free and blissful. I was myself, confident and untouchable. The new me that's slowly emerging from the ruins of my self confidence, though... Fiona has ruled the orgasms of the new me with an iron fist.

Each new day is leaving me dumber, hornier, more desperate with need. I don't know how much it cost her to buy such long-term ownership of my sexual pleasure, but I know how it makes me feel. Restricted and humbled, as each defeated is by the victor, disassembled into tiny little pieces that can be used to make Fiona's life better, with my own wants and needs forgotten.

And now, the egg. Buzzing, pleasing, but only pleasing so far that it becomes cruel in the end. Completely outside my control, and under Fiona's, like the rest of my sexuality.

Why, why is that so hot?!

"I wonder if you're going to make it to graduation day without orgasming," Fiona says with a smirk. And then, with no further warning, she lowers herself back onto my face.

Darkness envelops me. Her thighs clamp down against my ears, muffling all sound, while my face is pulled deeper into the warm mastery of her sex. She begins to grind against my face, smearing my skin with her arousal, marking me with her scent, like I'm part of her territory. It makes my hips twitch and my toes curl.

It makes me feel owned.

The pace of Fiona's facefucking increases, and with it, so does the egg in my cunt. I've found myself wishing, dreaming, begging that the non-stop stimulation would prove too much, that eventually the dam would burst and I'd get to cum, permission or not.

But that's not how my hypnotic conditioning works...

Each time I approach climax, I am yanked right back by an invisible leash, more and more constricted by the immaterial coils of Fiona's ownership over me. I feel myself becoming smaller and smaller, with less and less room for myself, more and more helpless as her grip tightens around every part of me...

I'm at her mercy. I want to say it, I want to ask forgiveness for being such a bitch, I want to beg her, to worship her, but all I can do is speak muffled apologies into her cunt as her breathing grows ragged. With my nose now firmly shoved in, being used as little more than her personal toy, I no longer have enough oxygen to do anything but communicate my distress--and my pleasure--in high pitched squeals that make me sound like an animal, not a person.

How appropriate.

When Fiona sits back once more, I again gulp in air like a desperate, subdued prey. I can feel how red my face is becoming, how teary my eyes are, making the dimness of the room even blurrier for me.

I'm suddenly aware of her face hovering just above mine, inches away, her warm breath against my skin, which by this point is soaked with her sweat and her juices.

"I know what that stupid brain of yours is thinking, slut," Fiona tells me, her voice a low and sultry whisper that seems to go straight to my clit. "That means you'll get to cum once the year here is over, right? But... will you really?"

My eyes widen, darting this way and that, in danger and confusion. I realise, with sudden dread, that I haven't given a single thought about after. I entered Ragnaring as the designated heir to my family empire. I'm going to leave with meagre grades, crushing debt to the school--whatever form that takes--and maybe a secret, half whispered reputation as an eager slut.

Most of all, I'll leave with my confidence in tatters... and Fiona's claws still sunk deep into me. I don't even need her to buy me at the Wheel to do what she says, it just comes so... natural. So if she walks up to me after graduation, snaps her fingers, and points to her boots... what will I do?

What won't I do?

I squeal in fear, distress, and dread. That only makes Fiona's smile widen.

"I have so many ideas for you..." she says, her thumb running down the length of my throat, a promise and a threat. "For this egg I got you... for how much further we can simplify your capacity for independent thinking..."

"Please..." I whisper, my breath quickening as her hand begins to wrap around my throat. Even I don't know what I'm begging her for.

"I wonder just how much you'll change if I keep you in chastity for six months... twelve... more?"

My mouth opens in shock, but before it can form words or animalistic grunts, Fiona lifts herself once again, lowering her sex against my defeated face. Once again I find myself trapped in the grip of her thighs, drawn in deeper and deeper into her, not a willing and active contributor to her pleasure, but just a living dildo... a thing.

My oxygen is cut off again as her weight sinks me into the mattress, and suddenly the world disappears and there is nothing but me and her and her power and dominance--and most of all, the sweet, constricting pain of my utter, irreversible annihilation.

I love this. I love being Ragnaring's collective lezzie slut, I love the laughter that accompanies me everywhere, the glimmer in the eyes of every girl when witnessing my newest public humiliation, the way being smothered under Fiona's cunt makes me feel.

It's where I belong. It's what I was born to do, to serve the stronger woman, to sink down into the abyss where the truth about ourselves dwells, hunting beneath the waves. I love doing it.

And I love her.

* * *

Elizabeth

I stick to the shadows.

For some reason, people have this fixation with predators being full of spectacle. Roaring, jumping, showing off... bad tactics, and not true to nature at all. Predators are best served by the quiet. The strike delivered when nobody's looking is that more devastating.

I'm surprised how few people manage to grasp this lesson. I could understand that in the everyday world out there, but in here, at Ragnaring? Everyone who isn't a cutthroat when they first step foot in here, becomes one by the end of the first week. Every single girl in this faculty should be a predator. Lurking out of sight, waiting patiently for the right time to pounce.

But no. It looks like people are just people, after all, no matter how determined or ruthless. Certain... impulses are hard to control.

I'd be lying if I said I can't relate, at least a little bit. As I contemplate the spectacle of whoredom before me, I bite my lower lip, squeezing my thighs together at the little shiver that travels through me.

Margaret is prancing across the cafeteria in her glorious leather harness, maid uniform, and armbinder. The soft buzzing coming from under her skirts, and her unending yelps of whimpering pleasure, leave very little to the imagination.

Admittedly, it is a sight to behold. The way her red mane compliments the glossy leather, the softness of the frilly uniform and the harshness of her bondage, the way her facial muscles spasm and eyes go glassy every time the buzzing picks up speed... god, is there anything better in the universe than seeing a strong girl, defeated and weakened, reduced into this state?

Margaret came here expecting to mop the floor with us, and now she literally mops floors for an entire student body of sadistic, sapphic dommes that revel in her downfall. She doesn't just look hot, she looks... ridiculous. More like a strange cross between a cleaning slut and a beast of burden than a rich heiress.

Fiona is leading her by a leash, of course, parading her as the leather bondage slave she is becoming. In her other hand, she holds a remote, and again, there's no need for an untethered imagination to figure out what that's for.

Every time she dials it up, the sadistic smirk on her face is a perfect companion to Margaret's desperate, doglike whimpers.

Fiona herself seems to have grown in stature after the midterm revelation, standing tall and proud, her boots always shiny enough to resemble mirrors... and you don't need to be a genius to figure out why that is.

Every single outbreak of laughter by the other students sends Margaret into a fit of violent shivers, and not all of them from shame, if I'm reading her right. How interesting. How quickly, the tide turns...

I have to give it to Fiona, she's doing a good job, dismantling Margaret's self-confidence. It isn't just her, of course. Good ol' Queen Maggie here has rapidly become the single most popular item on sale at the Wheel. There isn't one girl that hasn't tried her out at least once, and many have done so multiple times.

Well, except me.

Because predators thrive in the shadows.

"Hey Maggie," Fiona says to her new pet, snapping me out of my reverie. "Catch."

Just like that, the remote flies in the air--only to be snapped up by Kim, sitting at the head of the nearest table. Her wolfish grin can almost match Fiona's for intensity.

Before I know it, the remote is constantly changing hands, being passed from girl to girl. The buzzing goes up and down, carrying poor Margaret with it like a tidal wave. She's sweating copiously, squirming and squealing like a little mouse, begging the girls sitting at the table... though what exactly she's begging for, I'm not really sure.

Fiona's eyes briefly meet mine, while Margaret kneels before the table, unceremoniously shoving her face in between Kim's sneakers, rubbing her cheek against them like a loving kitten. But it's Fiona I'm focusing on. I see the brief moment of curiosity in her gaze, the unspoken question, the doubt.

But then, the glorious, wet sound of worshipful sucking snaps us both from our mutual scrutiny, and my eyes travel back to Margaret. Kim has popped her left foot free of the shoe, and the sock too, and good ol' Maggie is now busily slurping on her toes, swirling her tongue around them and moaning gratefully.

Impressive Pavlovian conditioning.

Maybe most amusingly, Margaret seems to have lost her balance, and can't regain it with the armbinder pulling her arms behind her back. No, she's entirely reliant on Kim's other foot--more specifically on the dirty sole of the sneaker currently pressed against the forehead--to stay upright.