Bound to the Turnings of the Wheel

"Mifhwehf ..." Isabel was not bad at pleading with her sapphire eyes. With a well-pitched Daddy or two, they had seldom failed to win her father over, even when he was more than a little irked at his daughter's apparent failures to fully capitalize on her Emory opportunities. If her pleading gaze had any effect on the woman dominating the big screen, though, it was only to encourage her.

"Hold your right finger up so I can see."

Isabel did, and the sheen of her juice was unmistakable even in the dim light of the living room at night.

"Repeat after me: 'Please, Mistress, I need this.' But only if it's true."

"Mifhwehf , vwo, fweev." Mistress, no, please.

"Is it not true? Because if it's not, your body is lying to me. Is your body lying to me, marath'damane?"

Isabel didn't trust herself to answer anymore even through the gag. Mistress Lanfear had never had particular trouble understanding her gag-talk through a simple ballgag anyway. She couldn't stop herself from giving a helpless, noncommittal, treasonous mewl, though.

"Say it, marath'damane. Say it, Isari."

Taking the phone call had been either the worst mistake she had made in two years, or the best decision she had made in her life. She could feel the tantalizing, rippling edges of subspace at the farthest edges of her vision, the farthest edges of her consciousness, what she hadn't felt in so long. She had never felt it at all via a mere FaceTime call, or she probably would never have picked up.

"Fweev, Mifhwehf, I heew fis."

"So you do, Isari. I'm glad to see that your mind has finally caught up with your body. Continue. Put your finger back where it was. Hike your dress higher."

The second part of that actually proved harder than the first, for the dress was ankle-length, wide but not overly so. She managed it anyway. In the meantime, the first part was much easier, for her sex was hungry for attention, even if just from her own fingers. It had been longer than she wanted to admit, or to think about. The moment she touched her clit, the electric current went straight from there to her brain, bounced around inside the most carnal parts of her mind, and arced back down her body to every finger and toe. She arched her back wantonly, cursing the baggy maxi dress that made it hard to display her breasts they way they deserved, the way the eager sub in her wanted to display them, had once displayed them in person to the very woman now present only by screen. She thrust them forward as if determined to overcompensate for her drab choice of clothing, particularly given the daring and exquisite ensemble that Mistress Lanfear had found for the occasion. It didn't matter that the enslaved damane in the series also wore drab gray dresses. What mattered was that her mistress wanted a show, and she wanted to give it. Her breathing was already fast and urgent through her nose, but she increased it further now, just to give that little extra prominence to the movement of her chest.

"That's it, marath'damane. More than marath'damane. That simply means Those Who Must Be Leashed. But you, you were born for it. Oh, I wish I was there to put this on you. Don't you?"

"Mmmm-hmmm!" Isabel—Isari—was already lost in the fantasy of exactly that, and had neither the breath nor the mental bandwidth to even attempt to form words around the rubber ball in her mouth. If she had had anything close to that mental bandwidth, she might have even used it in a last feeble attempt to turn aside, to pay attention to the red flags that by now were tattered remnants, banners left on a battlefield that had already been lost.

Mistress Lanfear held up the gleaming collar, open and facing the camera, so that it nearly filled the screen. Its impossibly high quality was even more apparent blown up to such size in 4K. Heavy and solid, delicately but ornately engraved, beautiful, teasing, taunting. "When I snap this closed, you know where to feel it, and you know what to do. Now, Isari." She snapped the collar closed in front of the camera, and the sound echoed both in the Isabel's room in Dolby Atmos, and in Isari's rekindled submissive soul.

"Oh Gaahhhv oh Gaahhv oh Gaaaahhhhhvv!!"

The orgasm crashed over her body, which had been starving for it for beyond forever.

And the fire and lightning within her burst free of their dams as well.

There was only the briefest warning crackle, and Isabel, still writhing in the midst of her orgasm, turned to one side and focused as much of her attention as she could muster on an innocent floor lamp. Both the main bulb and the reading bulb shattered and died in sparkling blazes of glory, and the lamp itself flashed with coruscating electrical arcs before it toppled, leaving a scorched circle on the ground where the base had rested. Worse yet, the outlet in the wall, which fortunately was just an exposed box backed by exposed brick rather than set into drywall, sparked and a thin rectangle of flame outlined it and began to creep up the conduit that ran along the wall. Isabel writhed still more and threw herself onto her back in a lewd, undulating mockery of a bridge pose, but there was no relief there with her eyes pointed skyward. The pendant lamps hanging from the ceiling of her little industrial loft sparkled and shattered as well, and one fell crashing onto her breakfast bar.

She forced her eyes closed, simply by instinct, even though she knew this never worked, because the lack of sight only heightened the strength of the orgasm that she was still in the midst of. Mistress Lanfear had blindfolded her more than once during their summers together for that very reason, among others. A very distant corner of her mind was aware that she was also not exactly doing anything to help regain her focus with her finger still teasing her clit even as the disaster unfolded around her, but she would have had trouble enough stopping at this point even if her mistress had commanded her to—and Mistress Lanfear had commanded quite the opposite. And both her young, healthy, sex-starved body and whatever impossible, hungry energy hid within her had needed this release for so, so long.

Something she had still never been able to describe rippled and rolled out from her in all directions. She felt the yoga mat burn beneath her, and her smelled the smoke. She leapt up, her eyes snapping open again. She quickly shed the dress, every inch of the hemline burning, and cast it onto the already-doomed mat. The twill storage box in which she had kept her mistress' toys and other mementos smoldered and then burst into flame. She grabbed the closest of the three separate fire extinguishers that she kept in her little flat, and, still naked and gagged, quickly turned the foam on the blaze. At first, it did no good, like throwing water on an electrical fire, as the torrent of energy continued to rage. It literally hurled the foam back from the mat and the dress and the box, scattering it across the room, even on the TV, where it looked like it landed in Mistress Lanfear's midnight hair, and just above her right eyebrow. The items on the floor burned to ash, ten times as quickly and completely as any normal fire would have consumed them, leaving nothing but blackened pieces of metal from some of the toys in the memento box. Only then, as if the energy was satisfied that it had already devoured what it could, did the firefighting foam begin to land and prevent the fire from spreading any further. With the energy subsiding, Isabel finally dared look at the circuit breaker box by the front entrance, hurrying over to it and deactivating the circuit to the outlet where her martyred lamp had been plugged in. The electrical fire had crept a yard or so up the conduit on the wall, but she was now able to turn the firefighting foam on that as well. Without the electricity--or anything less explicable--feeding it, the last little blaze was extinguished in seconds.

Isabel turned back towards Mistress Lanfear. A partial silence fell. There was still a faint crackling sound in the air, and it wasn't coming from the ruined pendant lamps or anything in particular. The odor of smoke was there, too, but it was surprisingly thin, only a trace amount from the burned conduit. Isabel's dress, yoga mat, and under-couch storage box had burned so completely that there was nothing left to rise as smoke. As it was, the odor of smoke was thin enough that it couldn't hide the rich, musky smell of Isabel's own arousal, which also glistened on her now-bare pussy.

The TV and phone were both somehow undamaged. Mistress Lanfear had stood by now and stepped back from her own camera, so she and her sul'dam dress were visible to her chest. She had crossed her arms over her chest, and the silver bracelet was visible on her left wrist, with the cord leading down to towards where the a'dam would be resting, coiled, on her hip. The woman on the screen had not said a thing the entire time. Her expression now was unreadable, but at the very least, it was not shocked.

"Aaaeee," Isabel moaned through the gag. God, even now, that sounds so hot! Oh God, please tell me she's not going to push me to round two after this. Because I'd probably do it. As powerful a release as that orgasm had been, she would have gladly ridden that wave even further if she hadn't had to jump up to save her loft, and possibly her building. It wasn't completely out of her system. She shuddered at the memory of continuing to finger herself even as the power surge had begun. Part of her couldn't believe she'd mustered the willpower to stop even as the yoga mat beneath her and the dress she was wearing had caught fire. She quickly unbuckled the back buckle of the gag, and gently squeezed the ball out of her mouth. "Addie, why?"

There was another partial silence. Then Mistress Lanfear's face softened and warmed, and there was Adalynn again. "Because, Isabel Desiree Bauer, you needed that even more than I did. And, unless my eyes greatly deceive me, you could still do with a little bit more. Maybe even a lot. I know I could."

Isabel shrank slightly in humiliation, both at the truth of the words and at how easily Adalynn had apparently seen it even through nothing but a phone camera. However, she had vented enough at this point now to not fall quite so effortlessly under Adalynn's spell anymore. "This isn't funny!" She gestured around her apartment, the ball gag still in her hands. "Look at this!"

"I'm looking at it," Adalynn replied. "And I will take care of it. And you."

"Addie, you can't help with this!"

"Bullshit. I've spent the last three and a half years at MIT, two and a half at least, working on ways. You wouldn't even believe the sacrifices I've made, the pseudoscientific rabbit holes I've wasted time on here, the rules I've broken, the things I've had to hide, for no reason beyond wanting to touch you again."

"Do you even remember what happens when you touch me?!" And Hell, apparently what happens now if she even talks to me?! Isabel gave a sudden, involuntary tremble, and realized that she shouldn't have asked that. Nearby objects suddenly catching fire wasn't the only thing that happened when Adalynn had touched her, and in fact, the other things were even more unforgettable. That was, unfortunately, the problem. The frisson of that memory made her newly conscious of her nakedness with Adalynn's face still dominating the miraculously-undamaged flatscreen, and she looked around for something to cover herself with. Unfortunately, there wasn't so much as a sweat towel here in the living room, and she still somehow couldn't just walk away.

Adalynn's voice lowered, and she was almost perfectly balanced between Adalynn Shields and Mistress Lanfear as she continued. "Don't make me repeat myself, marath'damane. Those were the two best summers of my life. I remember everything. Don't you?" And with that, she licked her tongue across her lips slowly and winked.

The frustrated stub of the orgasm—and other kinds of release—within Isabel that had been interrupted mid-course responded as if pleading from a cage within her soul.

"Oh, good God, girl, when was the last time you came?"

Isabel blushed to the roots of her hair. "Addie ..." Please don't make me say it.

"Were you thinking of me whenever it happened?"

Oh God, don't make me say that, either. Not that Adalynn needed her to admit it. It had been a rhetorical question. God damn that gorgeous evil genius.

Adalynn give a tiny, soft laugh. Even that tiny movement of the other woman's breasts in the form-fitting bodice of the sul'dam dress was somehow impossible for Isabel to look away from. "You say the nicest things when you say nothing at all."

Isabel buried her face in her hands. The chrome buckles on the gag she was still holding jangled together as if laughing in her face. "A girl has needs. But I've had to start going outside of town when I really need to cum."

Adalynn arched an eyebrow. "Outside of town? Say, maybe, forty-ish miles to the north?"

Isabel actually flinched. Even knowing that the woman had gone to MIT, every time they talked, Isabel still got a new revelation of just how smart Adalynn was. "I have unhealthy ways of processing shit. But seriously, I've had the condo association, the fire department, a social worker, even the cops all come here. Daddy's had to smooth things over, and he might not next time. He thinks I'm crazy, or spiraling, or who knows what, and his help is just enabling my slide, and telling him about this is not going to convince him that he's wrong."

"Good thing I didn't say I was going to get him to take care of you, then. I said I was going to."

"No offense, but he's a partner at Kaplan Stabler and he knows people here."

"And?"

"And you're a thousand miles away and dead broke."

The background behind Adalynn on the TV rotated as she got to her feet. Her smile shifted, too, somehow becoming more powerful and confident without sliding back into Mistress Lanfear. "Oh for two."

"What?"

There was a mysterious twinkle in Adalynn's eyes. "Never mind. But I do need to get to work. I don't want you to worry about anything, OK? Get some sleep if you can. Tomorrow's Christmas Eve, so we can hope that means no one gives you any shit. And if anything happens there and you need to crash somewhere else, you don't need to go all the way back to Red Top. My parents have a new place in Atlanta, and they're not there now. There's food and everything, linens, toiletries, could be an AirBnB but they're not using it for that. Wine cellar and liquor cabinet included."

Isabel was so dumbfounded at that last remark that she forgot to ask when Adalynn's parents had moved into the city from Chattanooga. "Adalynn, I haven't had a drink since Red Top. Have you?"

Adalynn set the phone down on some surface that was higher than the one it had rested on before, just below head height. When her hand came back into view, there was a rocks glass in it, with traces of brown liquid in the bottom, clearly finished.

"You didn't really think I was going to watch the season finale without oosquai on hand, did you?" She drained the last few drops in the glass, more water than whisky at this point. "I went with a George Dickel reserve. Highest corn content I could get my hands on." It was mixing cultures within the fandom—oosquai was a strong, maize-based spirit favored by the desert-dwelling Aiel in the far east of the setting. The Seanchan that Adalynn and Isabel were cosplaying as for the finale were naval invaders from the across the ocean to the far west, more than a thousand miles away. But to Isabel's eyes, that was hardly the gravest sin Adalynn was committing.

"Addie, are you serious?"

"A hundred percent. I told you, I've spent almost my entire time here at MIT working on this. And gotten some real results, too."

Isabel didn't know what to say, so she just fidgeted, naked, before the woman on the screen.

"Isabel. Do you trust me?"

"Too much. That's my problem."

"No, Isabel. It's no one's problem, and it's my honor. Get some sleep. You've had quite a day. Even if it was a desperately needed one. Oh, and Isari?" she switched back to Isabel's damane name, and her eyes suddenly hardened to Mistress Lanfear again. "No clothes. I'll enjoy thinking about you like this while I take care of things."

"W ... what?!"

"Did I stutter, Isari? Did you fail to understand me?"

The caged, unsatisfied yearning within her strained harder on the bars of its prison. "No, Mistress," she said. Why do I do this? Why do I feel like this when I do this?!

"Good. Later, beautiful." With that, Adalynn--Mistress Lanfear--finally cut the connection.

Chapter 2

With the TV suddenly off, Isabel suddenly realized how dark it was in her living room, with the pendant lamps overhead and her floor lamp both shattered. The windows were large, though, and covered only with thin gauzy curtains, so the ambient light of Castleberry Hill filtered in from behind the TV. Without that, Adalynn probably would have had a hard time seeing more than Isabel's silhouette. Isabel inched slowly along the wall, then climbed up onto the side of her couch, which let her get close enough to the TV that she could reach one long dancer's leg across the gap between the couch and her entertainment center and grab her phone. She dropped the gag on the end table that sat catty-corner between the couch and the TV. She switched the phone flashlight on, which helped a little bit more, but not really enough to see where it was safe to walk on the path to her bedroom. Also, she almost immediately got her low battery warning. You and me both, phone, she thought.

Well, the couch was plush and had been the site of many a luxurious nap, including the occasional nude one. There was a wireless charger on the end table, and Isabel set her phone there to charge. Then she positioned her favorite throw pillow behind her head, and snuggled down to sleep. She could deal with the mess in the morning.

Fate had other plans. Or more accurately, her condo association did, but the two were equally relentless, possibly in cahoots.

She was just on the dreamy, meandering threshold of sleep when there was a loud knock at the door, followed within femtoseconds by the familiar Ring doorbell chime. She grabbed her ailing phone and quickly loaded the doorbell camera view, praying that it wasn't who she already knew it was.

Ximena Gomez, a woman whose resting bitch face belied the fact that she was quite an active one, was the president of the condo association. She had retired from the compliance department at SunTrust just before the merger with BB&T, and her first retirement project was attempting to change the condo bylaws to prohibit renters. Not a week after she learned that Isabel was not really paying rent, she was staying in a loft owned by her father, she had changed the proposed amendment to include any non-owner-occupant. There was no one else like Isabel in the development, so the amendment had had no other purpose than to get rid of her. The other owners had voted down the proposal 27-28, in part because of a combined charm offensive from both Isabel and her father, Isabel saying as openly as she dared that it was unkind of Ximena to have changed the language just to get rid of her, and her father making the pitch to other owners that the condos were worth more if you could rent them out either to long-term tenants or as AirBnBs. Castleberry Hill was an up-and-coming neighborhood. Ximena had never forgiven Isabel.