Temptation Protocol Pt. 05

Say what you will about the drug, this felt right.

Then other things began to change. Most notably, his thoughts became more solid. His wants became tangible, something he could touch and feel, almost like they were in the palm of his hands. They were patterned, shaped, as though they would fit somewhere. The bond changed as well. The space it occupied in his mind grew, almost like it was stretching. Where there was once an opaque window into his Kept, now there was a hazy veil. Most of her stayed obscured, but this was still revelatory. Lucas could see part of her mind. It wasn't perfect clarity, but it was much closer than before. Occasionally, a clear want or need bubbled to the surface, something he could identify.

There were many. Run. Hide. Cry. Scream. They began to change. Lucas knew it was because of the drug. Fuck. Kill. Fuck. Submit. Lucas. Run. Fuck. Lucas. Fight. It was like a slot machine in slow motion. He felt he could stop it at will, pluck the thought in his mind, play with it. He reached in and found great resistance, like a wall bowing. Even then, he saw the boundaries where Sarea kept her innermost self from him and realized this wasn't really like infiltration. It was something different. When his image appeared again, he did just that, plucking the thought up from the bond and into his mind. Before he could do anything with it, Sarea gasped and cried out, recoiling from him.

"Good," Terese said, the smile in her voice, "You've already attempted to control her."

"I what?" he said softly.

"You saw something she wanted, right? You took ahold of it? What was it?" she asked.

"What the fuck?" Sarea whispered, "What was that?"

"Tell her to be silent, Lucas," Terese said.

Lucas glared at Terese, his perceived authority straightening his posture. Who is she to give me orders? That thought came out of nowhere.

"Good!" Terese cried out, clapping excitedly. "You do have dominant traits, Lucas! Step one: embrace those urges, but remember that there are still hierarchies you have to respect. Now, tell her to be silent."

Lucas looked at Sarea and said firmly, "Be silent."

Sarea opened her mouth, furrowed her brows, then finally croaked out, "Fuck you!"

"Such disobedience! Such manners!" Terese gasped in faux outrage.

Lucas barely took in the real world. He was all inward, watching Sarea struggle to disobey through the bond. He had encircled her in his mind, a dark cage or guardian, and suffused her thoughts with his will. Still, she fought. Her thoughts raced between options and memories, allowing him only a glimpse of each. As he watched, Lucas grew angry, which surprised him. Where was this anger coming from? It had to be because she disobeyed, or sought to still, but she should, right?

"Try again, Lucas," Terese said.

It felt right to try again, to bring her to heel, so he did. "Be silent!"

He saw the command hit her mind, saw the weight of it press upon her, trying to crowd out all other thoughts and wants. Sarea was strong, though, strong of will and strong of mind, and she rejected the thought, scurried away from it until she said, "No!"

Lucas's anger mounted. He pressed his will into her again, an overwhelming cloud of authority that tried to squash out any lingering independent thought or will. Again, Sarea's mind fled, her thoughts scurrying away like so many roaches in the light. No matter how much Lucas concentrated, Sarea's defiance remained. Terese finally broke his focus.

"So brutish, Lucas. Sarea is willful. She can't be tamed like that, at least not yet. You don't have enough gold in you, she doesn't have enough black. Are there other ways to get what you want?"

Lucas looked outward, watching Sarea as Terese spoke. Sarea's furious eyes tried to kill him. He considered other means, but it was like imagining rules when no one gave you any rulebook. Lucas swam back through his mind and into Sarea's. He pushed his command into her mind as he said, "Kneel, and be silent." It wasn't unlike sex. Easing in gently, checking to see if she was ok. At least the sex he had before he joined G & K.

Instead of the stick, why not the carrot? Instead of crushing her, taking what he wanted, Lucas decided to make behavior so desirable that she'd choose to. The problem was he didn't know how to do that. He imagined her other options-defiance, anger, rebellion-as distasteful, imagined painting them an unsightly color, imagined them with a stench. It was as though they lived in slow motion in their minds, though of course this happened in an instant.

It was working.

He watched as Sarea considered each one, mentally repulsed, then moved on to another. Each subsequent choice other than submission was tainted by Lucas's invisible will, and Sarea, whether she knew it or not, walked into a corner. The last step was to make submission feel as it should: incredible.

Lucas took hold of that thought in her mind-it was vague and thin, coated with her own distaste of the idea. Lucas cleaned it up, strengthened it, and made it appealing. Even then he had no idea how he was doing that, what mechanism made it happen, but he was doing it. Slowly, Sarea's mind turned to and fro, looking for an option out, her anxiety growing. Agitation ruled her until, with great relief, she alighted on the thought of kneeling and being silent.

Lucas almost didn't realize he'd done it. It wasn't until Terese clapped excitedly that he came back to the world to see Sarea on her knees in front of him, her eyes looking up into his. He expected to find anger there. Instead, he saw only relief. He really had agitated her, had removed all peace until it could only be found in listening to him. More discomfiting, Lucas found that he had a sense of peace now that she had obeyed him. He hadn't even realized he felt off when she disobeyed.

"Tell her she did well, you oaf," Terese said.

Lucas started, then said, "Good girl."

Sarea flushed crimson, and the anger Lucas knew had to be in her emerged briefly on her face. Lucas knew she felt out of place. The bond showed him-almost clear as day-how stunned she was at her behavior, but also how at ease behaving had made her feel. Lucas struggled with his own new demeanor. Lucas's reaction to her glint of anger seemed foreign to him. He wanted to discipline her right then and there, but he knew that thought had to come from the drugs. Right?

It was as though his mind was a river, each thought a current. The disiac had strengthened some currents and weakened others, leaving him the same man but with new instincts. That was fine. What wasn't was that he liked the new him.

Terese came over and patted Lucas on the arm, "Well done, Lucas, and no instructions needed!"

"What was I doing to her?" Lucas asked.

"Influencing her thoughts. Your first methods are very useful in some situations, but neither of you had enough of the variant to allow that level of control, nor is your bond that deep," Terese said, with a wink, "Yet."

"Are there other methods?" Lucas asked.

"Of course. You made all other options feel awful, an excellent choice for someone thinking they wanted this themselves. You could have made your command so desirable that to do otherwise would be a great disappointment. You could have also employed much more physical compulsion."

"What, like with my hands?"

Terese laughed again. Condescension was her only mode. "No, no. You could have inflicted literal pain or literal pleasure, if we modulated the dose and mixture of the disiac in your systems."

"How is that possible?" Sarea asked suddenly.

The discomfort returned. Her disobedience had jarred the peace from his mind.

"What a stubborn girl," Terese said with a small sense of pride, "Resisting the influence of this is no small task, Sarea. You will do very well in this training. However, rules are rules. We must punish now, Lucas."

Lucas was in complete agreement, but he dared not say it. He didn't want to admit to himself that this role had woken something inside of him.

"How do I do that?" he asked simply.

"This is where your creativity must come into play. I've seen punishments that would blanche even the most hardened dom," Terese said. As she spoke, she circled the pair slowly. She ran her hand along Lucas's broad back. She continued, "There are always the traditional sexual punishments. Humiliation, degradation. Others are decidedly more fun. Spanking, forced orgasm, slapping, denial of privileges."

Terese knelt near Sarea and knotted her hand in her hair, forcing Sarea to look at her. Lucas was beet red at the thought of it all.

"But that's just child's play. With disiac, we have many more options available. I've seen memories excised completely, lost to the sub. I've seen compulsion left permanently. Once, one of our trainees was so reduced to an object that we forgot her name. She was an it, to be used and discarded, until she learned to behave. That lasted three months," Terese continued. Her voice took on the somber tone of recollection. She rose to her feet.

"I don't think that's needed here," Lucas said cautiously.

"No, it is not, not yet. Something simple should suffice."

Lucas considered for a moment. He knelt in front of Sarea himself and looked her in her eyes, then said, "Give me a second, Terese."

Lucas held her gaze and went into his mind's eye, looking at Sarea's fleeting thoughts and concerns. What he found surprised him. She wasn't scared in the traditional sense. Not of him or what might happen to her.

She was scared of making him unhappy.

Tears came to his eyes. Nothing could have been sweeter, more endearing. Terese didn't miss it.

"You feel it now! I see it!" she said.

Lucas did see it. He put his finger under her chin and lifted her eyes to his. They were hazelnut and round, wide with the fear of displeasing him. "It will be ok. Trust me," he said. Before she could respond, he placed a light kiss on her lips, broke it, and rose.

He found a chair to sit in, thought of spanking, and said, "Crawl into my lap, Sarea."

The thought appeared in her mind, chased by others. Denial, fear, whether the door was locked, could she kill Terese in time, fear, his lap. I picked it up, held it in place, followed the process. This time Sarea didn't resist. The bond flared with relief as the path toward his happiness and hers opened before her. She crawled along the floor to the chair, pressed her hands into his thighs has she crawled over him, her ass up in the air. It occurred to Lucas then that this was dangerous for him. He liked this. No, he loved it. She was his in this moment. Not an object, but Sarea, his Sarea. He let that inkling of fear wash away in the pleasure of her obedience.

Lucas ran his hands through her hair then rubbed her back and cooed, "Good girl, good. But you weren't before. Were you?"

"No," she said after a second's hesitation, her normally strong voice meek.

"You deserve this?"

"Yes," she said.

Lucas raised his hand to spank her, but Terese grabbed his arm. "Wait!" she cried, "Think of her suit melting away. It is an extension of her. It should respond."

Lucas looked between Terese and Sarea, then did as Terese said. The suit rolled away from her round ass like water, liquifying and crawling away until her bare skin was exposed. Not for the first time, Lucas realized how stunning she was. It didn't stop him, though. His hand shot down hard on the meat of her ass, leaving a red print. His breath caught at the sight of it, but what really ignited something inside of him was the sound she made as he struck her. She squeaked trying to muffle her cry. The sound carried both pleasure and pain. Lucas felt dizzy with a love he didn't know if he could trust. He just needed that sound again.

He spanked her another time. Then another, then once more, finally setting her back on her knees on the floor. Her suit closed. Lucas raised her eyes to his once more and, to his great surprise, found a small smile on her face. It disappeared almost as quickly as it appeared, but he had seen it.

"Are you ok?" he asked.

Before Sarea could answer, Terese said with a smile in her voice, "We'll have to stop that. This was a good first attempt. You both show great promise. Perhaps we can move quicker than first planned. Let us try a different technique."

Lucas couldn't help but notice the sinister tinge to her voice. Terese pulled a box out from beneath the desktop and set it in front of the two. She lifted the lid to reveal the diodes from earlier.

"It's time to learn your first evasion techniques! Sarea has already shown an aptitude for it, but let's be formal about it!" she said with faux excitement.

Chapter 25: Force Majeure

Sarea's world had changed. She knew it wasn't forever, but the fearful voice in her heart kept asking, "What if this is forever?" When she'd inhaled the disiac, she felt her mind refract and change. With each fearful breath, her mind bent more and more toward what the drug asked of her. Each beat of her racing pulse carried more submission into her heart, more desire to please, more supplication. Each thud of her heart brought him to her mind. Lucas. What he needed, what he wanted, how she could provide either.

Then her thoughts crystalized on him. Something-no, someone-had entered her mind and taken hold of that thought.

No! Her mind reeled, shoving him out. What part of her she still controlled screamed against the drug's effects. Bile rose in her throat, fury its close companion. It felt as though her thoughts were in a draining sink, swirling toward an inevitability. In response, Sarea compartmentalized her mind. It was as though she'd fractured herself. It didn't matter. No matter what, she had to keep some part of herself away from this madness. Any miniscule resistance she raised drove a stake of nausea into her stomach, rained anxiety on her, but then, as though he were a messiah, he gave her a way out.

She just had to obey. Then he'd be happy, then she'd be happy.

With that first command, the urge appeared, and she buried what part of her she still owned so deep that she hoped no one could find it, not even Terese. And then she obeyed, and the world became right.

She had deserved that spanking, but didn't Terese see? He was so gentle when he did it, each slap on her bare flesh a sign of love. In reality, it was Sarea who had the upper hand. She just had to listen, be a good girl, and she'd have him in the palm of her hands.

No!

Deep inside, Sarea still fought, but it was too late. The drug had taken hold, the discomfort of disobedience grown too great. She would be whatever Lucas wanted her to be, and she would like it. Even the rational part of her, the sane part saw the wisdom in it. For how many eons had wives controlled their husbands in the same way? She could do this. She must.

Now though, on her knees, ass smarting from his smacks, fear trickled through her again. Terese's excitement could only mean pain. Sarea looked up through veiled eyes at Lucas, who had kept his eyes on her. She trusted him in that moment, and fumbled with the thought, whether it was authentic or drug induced, whether it could be trusted or abused. This must be how stockholm syndrome works, she thought. Lucas' surprised eyes told her he had seen the thought flit by.

What was it like for him to see her thoughts? What did she look like under such a revealing microscope? She hoped, embarrassingly, that he found her pleasant.

"Tell her to stand," Terese chimed in, breaking their connection.

"Stand," Lucas said, never taking his eyes from her.

The command pressed onto her mind and she let it wash through her, accepting the order and standing to great relief. She studied her owner, for that was the only term that seemed applicable. He owned her in this moment, could do with her what he pleased. His hands were the size of her torso, it seemed, or that he might be able to encircle her waist if he placed them fingertip to fingertip. His body, maybe twice as wide as hers, tensed as he saw her thoughts. Did he flex? Was that for her?

In spite of everything, Sarea flushed. Her body's involuntary response vexed her further. Beneath her skin suit, she felt her skin warm with color. Pleasing him meant pleasing herself, she realized with distaste. The part of her that was still hers, that she kept from the bond, sneered at the thought. She just had to get through this, get to a place of trust. Then she could escape.

Terese raised an eyebrow at her. "I knew you'd have an aptitude at this," she said, "We see you hiding something in there. That has to change."

Sarea opened her mouth to speak, but she recalled the compulsion to be silent. Terese noticed.

"This is a good first test, actually. Speak your mind Sarea," Terese said.

Through the bond, she felt Lucas's discomfort. She saw it, too. He tensed at the order to disobey him. It hit her through the bond, his need for her obedience, and she gave a tiny shake of her head, seeking the relief she'd known would come.

Terese tsked, "I'd have thought you'd leap at the chance to rebel. I appreciate a good little sub as much as the next gal, but I need you do this now to learn. Speak."

Sarea struggled. She saw how she'd do it, the acrid taste it would leave in her mouth, her heart thudding. She curled her fingers together in front of her and fidgeted.

"I," she said softly, meekly, "I wanted to ask what you meant when you said that has to change."

As she spoke, her voice shrank. The weight of Lucas's will being cast aside pummeled her.

"Good question. Compartmentalization is the primary, and best, tool to protect against infiltrations and disiac poisoning. However, if the infiltrator or perpetrator sees it, as Lucas and I can, it provides an angle of attack, something in your mind that, with enough disiac of the right strains, we can break," Terese lectured.

Sarea took a deep breath and was about to speak again when Lucas interjected, as though he'd seen her thoughts. Sarea sighed with relief at being able to maintain the compulsion.

"Was this a particularly strong dose of gold and black?" Lucas asked.

Terese's smile, which had never left her face, grew. She paced around the small room, running a hand across Lucas's shoulder, then Sarea's lower back.

"It's a middling dose. Strong enough to see through the bond, not strong enough to remove will or infiltrate without external pressures. How does it feel?" she asked Lucas, envy coloring her voice.

"It feels," he said, "Right. That scares me."

Terese laughed. "Of course it does. Now, Sarea," she said, leaning close enough to whisper, "Hide that part of you. Men always want an easy path, don't they? Make it easy for him to believe you haven't compartmentalized. Make him happy. Do you understand?"

Sarea nodded, maintaining her silence.

Terese kissed her softly on her neck, just below her ear. "Good girl, show us."

Sarea began arranging her thoughts, organizing her mind. The part of her she kept private, she placed behind everything. She chose what she presented to the bond carefully, as though she were a conductor in her own mind. It was freeing to find that this organization, this masking of herself, wasn't disobedience. It was a lie by omission, or perhaps by overwhelming force. She placed thoughts of Covenant, of Lucas's fight with her on the rooftop, of his first taking of her, of their sex the previous morning. Only things he had already seen. She didn't know how long she worked at it, but it must have been a fair amount of time. Terese paced the room constantly.