The Non-Consent State

It was getting easier, Abigail realized, to say 'no' to her friends. When first she had told them that she couldn't go get donuts with them, that she had to focus on her classes, she had felt like a betrayer. Now it was easier.

Easier for her, anyway. Her friends weren't taking it any better.

"Come on, Abigail," said Cora, stretching the word 'on' until in nearly snapped. "You never do anything interesting."

Abigail squeezed her empty coffee thermos. "I need to improve my grades, okay?"

"Bullshit!" Cora came back, slapping the table. She pointed an accusing arm (a finger just wasn't enough for Cora). "You used to be all social with us!"

"It's true," said Zoey. Her voice was flat, and her head inclined like a cartoon schoolteacher. "Last year, we went out twice a week, minimum, and you were there every time. You almost skipped an exam to go see Ruby Skies II with us."

Abigail squirmed. "I was in the wrong major."

"Didn't you change majors in May?" asked Minnie. Minnie had only just finished her meal, the slowest eater as always. But for how little she spoke, she always paid the most attention, damn her. "But you only started saying 'grades this, grades that' in October."

"Ooh!" Cora squealed. "Busted!"

"Fine," said Abigail. "After I changed majors, I worked on making my home energy-efficient. That was my project. After I got that done, then I started focusing on being a good student. That's my new project, okay?"

"Bullshit," Cora said again. "You spent Halloween with us."

"But then I focused!" Abigail said it with more force than she'd meant two, and her jury of three were shocked. "I had to, alright? This is important. I neglected my classes, and I almost lost my scholarship."

Abigail got ready to slug it out with them like a proper lawyer, to give dates and events that explained her behavior down to the day. In her mind, she started assembling a portfolio of evidence to prove that no, it wasn't an excuse to push her friends away. She really was concerned about her grades and nothing else.

Mercifully, she didn't have to. The conversation veered away from Abigail's absenteeism. They began talking about Minnie's plans for graduation, and the next time Abigail checked her phone, almost an hour had passed. She worked up the courage to excuse herself, and just as she opened her mouth, Cora let out one of her ear-splitting yowls.

"Katri-i-i-i-ice!" she squealed. "What's up, girl?"

Into the food court walked the student who had so recently been a free woman. Where she had once worn a long shirt, short pants and a pair of old sandals (her Bachelorette Suit, as Minnie had dubbed it,) her master had swapped the shirt out for a tighter one with a heart-shaped boob window, a short, pleated skirt and bright red stripper heels. And, of course, she wore a collar around her neck, from which hung a little heart-shaped locket with a keyhole in the front.

When Abigail had first heard of Katrice's enslavement, she had feared the worst. Then Katrice had been unreachable for a few weeks and been suspiciously tired when she finally reappeared. But now she seemed to be proud of her jingling collar. She seemed proud of her high heels, which made her the tallest of the group. She even seemed proud of that ridiculously slutty boob window.

Katrice looked like she wanted to say something, but she never had a prayer of getting the first word in. Cora, Zoey and Minnie all bombarded her with questions, sympathy and demands for news all at once. Abigail felt only a small pang of guilt as she joined in the barrage.

"It's okay, it's okay," said Katrice, when the noise died down enough. "I'm fine, girls, really."

"But you looked so scared before," said Zoey.

"Yeah, I was scared." She fingered the keyhole locket. "I mean, it's scary, making a big transition like that. I knew Eric for like a year before, so it wasn't completely just random, but being his sex slave? It's a big change. Now he decides where I'll live out of college, he's got me off my part-time job... and now I'm dressing like this!" She struck a sexy pose, and Cora gave a squeal of approval.

Abigail knew she had work to do, but Katrice coming back was a big deal. Her coursework could wait for a little longer, just long enough to catch up.

It didn't have long to wait. Less than twenty minutes into their conversation, Katrice's phone gave a musical flutter, and she pulled it from her ankle pack. "Oops," she purred. "Looks like a booty call."

Cora gave another one of her ear-splitters.

"We'll talk later," Katrice promised, as she clicked away on her heels.

On that, Abigail found her opportunity to leave. She ducked out of the university building and onto the pavement, heated to sizzling by the Nevada sunshine.

The universe, it seemed, was conspiring against her getting any coursework done. In the shade of a pedestrian overpass, a voice stopped her. A male voice.

'A man.' Abigail's mind went into overdrive. The University of Nevada had split its campuses into men's and women's colleges so female students wouldn't have to worry about enslavement on campus. But by state law, people couldn't be banned from roads or sidewalks, so she couldn't get the authorities to come and get rid of him. She was alone, and statistically, a man was more likely to enslave a lone woman than to pick one out of a group and take her home. Abigail was in a bad spot, but it couldn't be helped now. She turned around.

"Miss," the man repeated, "You've dropped something." Sure enough, he held her stainless steel water bottle in his hand.

He didn't look the way Abigail had imagined a slaver would look. He was thin, not much taller than her, and had a mild, neutral face, pale enough that he must have been an indoor person. He wasn't fancily dressed, but his black T-shirt and black work shorts nicely set off his short, swept black hair.

He carried the bottle to her with a lazy stride and a casual smile. It very nearly made Abigail believe that this wasn't a ruse to get his hands on her.

"How about you set it down so I can come grab it?" she challenged.

He stopped, knelt, set it in the shade, and stepped back into the blasting sun. He shaded his eyes with a hand. "Better?"

Not much better, Abigail decided. Even if he never got close enough to hand her the bottle, he would still be close enough to enslave her. For that matter, he was already in a position to own her. The letter of the law didn't require that a man put a collar on a woman to acquire her. The collar was only one option. He could also 'issue a clear verbal command' for a legal enslavement. She had answered him, proving that she could understand him from where she was standing. And if he knew what he was doing, then he was recording this conversation on his phone. All he had to do now was say the word, and he'd have proof that he had legally, comprehensibly demanded her. It would hold up in court, easily.

"Nothing to lose," she sighed to herself, as she walked up to the bottle. Maybe she would get lucky.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"Susie," she said. 'Now,' she thought, 'here it comes...'

"What are you doing tonight, Susie?"

Abigail scowled. It was one thing for this slick jerk to turn her into his personal sex slave—the least he could do was not waste her time doing it. "Busy, very busy," she recited. "Work to do. And I promised to meet my friends later." It was one of those half-truths so badly told that it sounded like a complete lie. She snatched up the bottle.

"How about I take you on a date instead?"

She clenched her fists. She looked back to see if the bus was just about to leave, allowing her to make an Indiana Jones-style escape from earshot. No such luck. She could either say 'yes' and waste her entire evening with this complete stranger, or she could refuse and probably be collared and kneeling at his feet within the hour. "That would be fine," she strained out.

* * *

To the man's credit, he pulled out all the stops with the act he was putting on. He didn't have to do it; already, Abigail could practically feel the stripper heels on her feet, the lipstick on her face and the tassel glue on her nipples. Or whatever slutty thing he planned to put on her.

Nonetheless, he played it to the hilt. He took her to Mancy's, a nice, upscale restaurant that did mostly bread, soup and salad, and also had burgers and sandwiches for people who didn't like to try new things. Susie made a point of ordering the most expensive dish on the menu. She had been wanting to try it anyway.

The man was called Mitch. It was the perfect name for him, because it was short and ordinary, but still somehow caught her attention, even when it had no right to.

'I wonder what he sees in me,' Abigail thought. 'I'm not one of those submissives who will go around dressed like a slut.' She looked, she supposed, like a frumpy, grown-up version of a schoolgirl from a Japanese cartoon: a buttoned shirt with a conservative skirt over tights, plus shoes that her friends insisted were dress shoes. Abigail considered them to be merely nice-looking running shoes. Her ordinary dark brown hair, too-round-for-prettiness face and her habit of looking at the floor did not recommend her either. Of all her group of friends, she had always figured she would be a man's last choice of a slave girl.

"You might not remember me," said Mitch. "We met in Social Geography class back in our freshman year."

"SoGeo?" She racked her memory for a boy who looked like him. Back in her freshman year, as a virgin eager for experience, she would have been on the lookout for pretty boys—

'Not that I think he's pretty,' she insisted to herself...

...and she didn't remember calling anyone 'Mitch.' Then the memory clicked, and an evil, petulant thought occurred to her. "You're not Mitch," she said gleefully. "You're Doon. Doon Eiserton." He hated the name so much that he went by his middle name.

Abigail waited for him to deflate.

Instead, he smirked. "I always went by Mitch, but if you prefer it, Doon it is. I can be flexible when it comes to names. Anyway, 'Susie,' how is your master's degree coming along?"

"My master's?"

"In sociology? You told me that would be your major."

"Oh." Now she was the one who was blushing. "No, I changed my mind. Sociologists talk about problems, but they don't..." she tried to put it into words. "I never met any who had any solutions. I guess I wanted solutions. So I majored in law."

"Law? Did the Love at First Sight law influence this?"

"Not exactly." She paused. "Well, sort of. It did, and it didn't." The words started pouring out. "It's like this: I didn't start following the whole voluntary slavery fad because, well, I thought it would just be a fad. My friend Zoey told me about all those studies saying women were more mentally healthy in sexual submission, and when they legalized female slavery in Sweden, of course I was surprised, but I didn't really..." it sounded callous now that she said it: "...I didn't really care."

"Di-"

"But when they passed the law in Australia, that's when my classmates and I started following it, because Australia has common law like we do, and mainland Europe has civil law. So it was interesting to see what cases were coming up."

"You had already changed majors by then?"

"Right. But when it started catching on in America, that's when I really got interested. I knew I wanted to specialize in enslavement law, because the whole idea of women being owned by men, it just..." She stopped before she could say it fascinated her. "It just bothers me."

"Bothers you?" He suppressed a smile. "Then why did you stay in Nevada? This is the only state that legalized enslavement without consent!"

"The Love at First Sight law, I know." She shifted her shoulders as if she could burrow through the restaurant booth and escape the question. "It's just... the case studies in Nevada are fascinating. In the consensual enslavement states, there are plenty of civil cases like Samick v. New York, where they closed the polygamy loophole, but the criminal cases are always limited to legality-of-enslavement: did she really consent to be his slave, or did he just kidnap her and then fake it?"

"Sure."

"But here in the non-consent state, legality of enslavement crops up much more often, usually filed by a third party, and it leads to a lot of other laws getting examined, like where it's legal to ban men. Because if he took her while he was trespassing, it's not legal and he can't keep her. And it has people talking about surveillance and the Fourth Amendment, because after Wheadon v. Missander, now the man has to prove he claimed the woman before he can keep her. So he needs to come up with proof, right?"

"Right." He said it casually, not even pretending that it wasn't on his mind.

Abigail's train of thought crashed to a halt. 'This is not a date,' she reminded herself. 'He wants to get in my pants.' And, she remembered, she would probably end the day with her clothes stripped off, her pussy shaved and with nothing but a ribbon to cover her boobs. She looked into his face and pictured him holding her leash, and it set off a feeling in her that she couldn't handle. "Hang on," she said, "I need a bathroom."

In the ladies' room mirror, she saw her face red. She'd had a few close calls with single men before, but none of them had gotten her this flustered. She filled her hands with cool water from the sink and washed the sweat from her hairline.

A woman walked by behind her, a slave girl. She had a pleated skirt and a peanut-shaped boob window, much the way Katrice dressed (it was becoming the fashionable look for slave girls). But this girl was sporty, with tanned skin, a ponytail and athletic shoes.

"Hey," Abigail tried, "I have a question."

The sporty slave girl turned to her. "Yea-huh?"

"How do you dress like that? I mean, what store did you get those clothes at?"

"Gonna get leashed, are ya?" sang the slave girl. "Some guy got lucky!"

'She thinks I'm already a slave!' Abigail felt an unwholesome quiver through her body. "No, no, no, that's not it. I want to dress up so men will think I'm taken, and they won't try to get me." Pride had stopped her from doing that before.

The slave girl tilted her head. "You wanna be a collar-dodger? Tell you what, girlie, so was I, once upon a time."

"Really?"

"True story. But let me tell me you..." she leaned in to whisper, as if there was a man in the room. "The real thing's a lot better."

"You think I should submit to him?"

"Well," she stepped back and cocked her hips—no, she cocked her whole body, from her chin down to her shoulders, hips, knees and feet— "Is he a jackass?"

"I don't know." She thought back to their class together. "I guess not."

"Is he good in bed?"

"I haven't found out."

"Does he have money?"

"I'm pretty sure."

"You know what, to each their own," the slave girl gave an exaggerated shrug as she walked off to the bathroom stalls. "But you know you could do a lot worse."

When Abigail walked out of the bathroom, she saw Doon sitting contentedly in front of two untouched meals. "Dinner is served!" he said brightly.

* * *

They walked back under the stars.

And of course, they were walking to Doon's place. He had been a gentleman when he had asked Abigail if she would come to his house and stay the night. It had occurred to her, dimly, that she could refuse. Not that it would have gotten her anywhere. Most likely, it would gotten her on his bed, with her wrists strapped to her ankles and a ball gag stuffed into her mouth. Even so, part of her wanted to refuse, wanted to stand up for her individuality, for her autonomy. Part of her wanted to prove that she couldn't be bought with just a dinner date.

But she hadn't refused. No matter how this day ended, no one had ever put this much effort into seducing her, and she was going to savor every moment of it.

It was a pleasant surprise that his dwelling was not a men's dorm, nor even a condo with a roommate, but a house that seemed to belong to him alone. He brought her straight up to his room, which didn't surprise her at all.

He began to touch her hair. He said something charming that she didn't even hear, and he grew bolder and touched her face. Her shoulders. Her waist.

She had started to feel moist back in the bathroom at Mancy's, and in the two hours since, she hadn't calmed down at all. She wouldn't let herself demand sex, not from the man who would probably own her as a sex toy soon anyway. But she wanted to. Her frustration escaped her in a moan.

Then he kissed her. In the back of her head, Abigail could hear Cora's voice declaring, "Second base!"

Doon did nothing for a minute, just let her stand there and melt under his hands and his lips. Then Abigail noticed her knees were bending. Doon was pushing her down, so gently she had barely noticed.

'He wants me to suck on him!' she realized. 'How brazen!' But he had earned it. "I'll do it," she told him. "But then I want it hard again."

He smiled down at her. "You have my word."

Part of her wanted to throw herself at him. Instead, she imitated his calm by slowly, gently undoing his belt and sliding it free, then working free his button (it was backwards) and finally sliding the zipper down. His shorts hit the carpet with a stiff 'ploff.' She took away his underwear the way one would unwrap a rare, cherished candy.

His cock was clean-shaven and straight as an arrow, just like the rest of him. Abigail almost laughed at how appropriate it was. He greeted her with a clean, manly musk. The smell brought back memories of her last sexual adventures, memories she didn't know she had. Her pussy ran so hot that she felt ready to cramp, and she reached down with her left hand and massaged it beneath her skirt. With her right hand, she turned up his cock and took in the scent.

Musk, a hint of sweat, and even a slight perfume. This man thought of everything. She parted her lips and kissed the shaft. The flesh resisted her lips, but not completely. She took bigger kisses, until she let out her tongue and licked up the side of him. Another lick covered his underside in saliva. One more lick brought her tongue to his tip, and she opened wider and took him into her mouth.

'No going back now,' she thought, which was ridiculous. The point of no return had been hours ago. She opened wide enough to take in his whole cock, then a little wider, and her lips made slutty slurping noises on his skin. She swallowed more of him, then less, then more, all to the rhythm of his breathing and moaning. She spent a minute drawing him out, making him breathe faster and faster. She looked up, straight into his eyes. That set him off. He smiled and cringed at the same time, the underside of his cock flexed, and globs of hot stickiness filled her mouth. She tried to swallow, but with her lips sealed around his shaft, she failed. She closed her eyes, savoring the feeling of being filled. Then she backed away from his cock, closed her lips and swallowed his cum.

Smooth leather settled on her neck. She looked at his hands to see him fastening a slave collar onto her. "Huh?" was all she could say.

"Surely," he sighed happily, "you knew I was going to do this?"

"Yeah, but..." she struggled to think through her sexual haze. "Why'd you wait so long?"

"I wanted you to want it first."

Sometime that night, she had prepared a speech about how he had no right to do this to her. But even if she had remembered all of it, she did not want to give it. "I guess you succeeded."

* * *

Susie awoke in stages. First, she became aware that she was warm. Then that she was naked. Her arms and legs announced themselves one at a time, then her surroundings came into focus.

She was on her back, more or less the position she'd fallen asleep in. Her legs sprawled on the bed, still tingling from Doon's ravishing performance. She remembered him driving her to orgasm, pausing to keep himself from spending, then building her up to another one, more times than she kept track of.