"Wake up", says a voice softly.
I'm getting real tired of falling unconscious at inconvenient times, but as I open my eyes, I can't be mad. Listener looks down upon me. She's smiling gently, like a soft breeze on a meadow, and the flowers of her eyes are in full, luscious bloom. I lay my head back, and drink her in. Savor her.
She smiles wider. I don't mind. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And I long to behold.
And then my eyes descend to her neck.
It's normally a delightful part of Listener. Of Tonya. Necks are just there most of the time. Ass and tits are what the hungry pursue. Me? Nothing like a little bit of skin in the most innocent of places to bring the most dangerous of desires.
But it's no longer her neck anymore.
Between the collarbone and her chin, thick leather circles and shackles her throat. Her head's angle isn't one of choice. The collar holds her stiffly there. The ostentatious addition is accompanied with a large metal ring for clipping... leashes. Small diamonds--and I can't help but know in my soul they're real--encrust the ornament fully. Listener is no longer herselve's.
She is willing property now.
I sit up, and scramble backwards from her. Listener doesn't move, but smiles that same gentle smile. Only now, something darker, something twisted, glints in the back of her expression, hidden from view and yet impossible to ignore. She's naked still, and the dirt of our floor clings to her body. She's a savage. A wild woman. Burning, flawless intelligence melds with purpose in her eyes, and she stares at me like a predator placing its prey at ease.
She knows what I think.
She smiles wider.
"Don't worry", she says, and I'm not convinced in the slightest. "Goddess is asleep for now. But she wanted me to inform you of the way it will be this time going forward."
I struggle to my feet, my muscles screeching in protest; how long had I been laying on the rock-solid ground? And how much... how much of that time had I been clenched? I don't dare assess myself, or focus on the dampness of my panties, or the sting of my chest; as evil and as sinful and as perfect a punishment as it is, I have to look at Listener. My mind is quiet. Focused. Irregularly so. I bear only the slightest attention toward it, perhaps enough to slip between Listener's mental probes unnoticed. Her face is unchanged from one moment to the next as the recognition fades like a candle in the breeze. It will be there, waiting for me; but for now, it feels like my greatest ally. I am in control of me, and my eyes trace her slow padding pattern around me, furious and locked in.
A tendril of steam rises from my breath. I can feel my maw hot, and ready, and boiling with feelings that are hiding from me for their own sake. I grit my teeth.
Listener keeps circling.
"Goddess has instructed me to inform you that all of her property wears a collar of ownership". From behind her back, a black mass of leather and shining silver buckles is revealed. I stare at it, noticing its sloped curves and rigorous construction. It's meant to be used, and held, and pulled, all while maintaining that inimitable elegance.
I can't help but notice it's a little smaller than Listerer's collar.
But then again, I'm smaller than Listener, too.
It's a collar, just for me. For an instant, destiny laughs at me, its sickly simpering giggles warping the air between me and the collar.
We're connected.
I cover the weakness, the thought, the untempered stream of consciousness, but
Listener has already heard.
Fuck her.
"Soon", she replies dryly. She licks her lips; it's like I'm trapped in a bad porno.
But that's not true.
After all, bad porno never brought me orgasms without my decision.
"You don't have to put it on now", continues Listener. "Goddess will see to it that you are properly adorned when she sees fit."
"Did you even fight when she put that on you?" My voice is low and dangerous. It's unfamiliar to me. It's starting to feel like I'm not alone within myself, and for the life of me, I can't tell if that's good or bad.
"Oh, yes". Listener answered with rapture, her eyes drifting up as a wave of ecstasy rolls through her like an untimely wave. "Fighting is such an important part of acceptance".
"At least now I've met someone who could beat your arrogant ass in a fair fight". I snarl loathingly. But for all my fronting, all my illusion, Listener smiles.
"Oh, not at all, sweetheart." My chest boils with jealousy even as my loins throb.
"Don't you see? I've won".
She closes her eyes, and readjusts her head, still at a propped, uncomfortable angle. But she's cooing, like a lover is caressing the most intimate parts of her, like her very soul is at peace with her new status, and this is the moment I choose to charge into her like a furious, flame-cloaked quarterback.
My ferocious dive delivers my right shoulder deep into her sternum, and the tremendous "OOF!" she lets out is the most satisfying and normal thing I've heard since I first laid eyes on the Goddess. We slam to the floor, Listener coughing and grunting with my unexpected assault, while I work to straddle her, white-hot fists delivering blow after blow to her perfectly unblemished face.
With each connection, her skin sizzles; with each punch, my heart thrums. I raise my fist, and the fist comes down, and the satisfying crunch that follows is like a high that I don't ever want to forget.
But after the fourth punch, they aren't my fists anymore.
My goal, in the split second of decision, had merely been to get control of Listener by any means necessary. Everything after that seemed a blur of pointless decision making, since nothing was making sense, nor was it likely to so long as I was confined to the cave. But after three or four punches, she was subdued; or at least she seemed to be. And yet my heart wouldn't let my brain cease its assault. I watched like a passenger as my glowing fists tried to make Listener's head a crater.
Smash! For calling me sweetheart.
Smash! For letting herself be so enthralled by the Goddess.
Smash! For reading my thoughts without my permission.
Smash! For all the times she'd caught my eye, and I'd caught her indifference.
Smash! For the effortless love between her and my Goddess-
I stutter, my next flurry of punches only halfway to her. Not my goddess. I shut my eyes, trying to control myself, trying to lead my mind towards a normal train of thought. The Lady in Red... is still asleep.
But the Goddess is awake in my mind's eye.
I can't stop seeing her. I close my eyes, and she is closer in my vision every time. I shudder. She's reaching out to me. Accepting. Inevitable. Listener tries to roll away, and her thigh plunges against my clit with unyielding pressure. My eyes roll into the back of my skull as lightning arcs along my nipples and my pussy and my heart and for an instant in immortal time I'm whole, complete, and I need no costume to define me, nor teammates to encompass me, and I am all of myself, and I'm naked and it's good and the white marble cools my legs as I kneel beside a throne and wait for my next unbreakable command-
Somewhere, far, far, far beneath me, Listener is squirming. Words cannot convey how little I care.
All I want is to meet the eyes of my Goddess.
In my mind's eye, my gaze turns skyward. A shaped, feminine head, black locks flitting in the breeze, blocks the sun. Protects me. Ensconced me. Drowns me in her mere presence.
Her face grows closer. I raise a delicate hand to touch it, to touch her flawless whiteness, her lips' redness, her eyes' greeness.
But it is not my Goddess who looks down.
It's Listener.
And I scream.
And I scream and scream and scream, the world spinning around me, the foundation of being collapsing into dust beneath me. Life is hollow. The universe may burn. Because it is not Listener's eyes I adore, Listener's lips, Listener's unholy, usurping treason.
Too late, I feel her static in my mind, sense the end of her tethers bristling against the more sensitive tendrils of my consciousness, and I know what I see is not what is real, and I snap my eyes open that have been closed for how long, and find Listener atop me, savage and drooling and eyes bloodshot with effort and sweat and gluttony, and I tremble as she feasts on me, neuron and synapse and sensation, and I hear her keening moans of approaching climax, and my screams don't end.
I look backwards in my own thoughts, wondering why they look, feel, arrive different, and once the changes are installed, it's like they could never be any other way. Goddess' blood-red dress is svelt the first time I remember looking upon her, but she wears Listener's face, graceless and beautiful and savage and untamed ferocity that will feast on my very fucking soul and I can't let her but what choice do I have, and now her fingers are exploring my nexus, trailing fluid and finger through my smooth slickness and finding their mark and pressing home and not even yielding as my mouth grows wide and my eyes grow dim and I submit and succumb and obey...
