"Can we talk?" The woman in the green dress didn't wait for an answer; she simply sat down in the seat next to Christine and put her hand on Christine's knee with the kind of familiarity that usually left people pulling back a stump. (Well, a metaphorical stump. Christine was only five foot two and had biceps like pipe cleaners, but she never let that stop her from losing her temper around the kind of people who saw short blonde girls with blue eyes and curly hair and thought they could get handsy. She called it her 'terrier stance'.)
"I'm sorry I'm late," the woman continued, as though her presence at the restaurant where Christine had decided to eat breakfast was some sort of pre-arranged appointment. "I thought that downtown would be pretty quiet on a Sunday morning, but traffic was a beast. I hope you haven't been too bored by the wait?"
Christine stared down at the woman's elegantly manicured hand, still resting on Christine's knee as though she was reassuring a nervous puppy. She looked up at the woman's face, almost the exact opposite of Christine's--chiseled features instead of rounded curves, deep brown eyes instead of sparkling blue, long raven-dark waves of glossy hair compared to Christine's short, frizzy curls. Even their heights were different--they were both sitting, but Christine still had to look up almost a full foot to meet the stranger's gaze. (And over a goddamn shelf of boobs--another way they were distinctly different.) The woman was striking, impeccable, unrepentantly beautiful... and Christine had never met her before in her entire life.
"I haven't been waiting for anything," she said, letting the naked bewilderment show in her voice. "I think you've got the wrong person." She glanced down at the hand on her knee, allowing her confusion to shade into contempt as she added, "Very much the wrong person."
But the woman in green only chuckled. "That's good to hear," she said, as though replying to an entirely different conversation that happened in her head. "I'll be honest, Trevor thought that you might have had a little trouble with some of the suggestions--he said you were a little bit tricky to put under when he first met you last night. But I could tell you just needed to be shown that first step. After that, you'd follow the path wherever it led."
"I... what?" Christine raised her eyebrows incredulously, her fingers itching to swat the woman's hand away like an annoying mosquito. "What, I... what? What are you even talking about? I don't know you, I don't know any Trevor, I didn't meet anyone last night, and I just came to my normal restaurant like I do every morning to get breakfast like I do every morning. I'm not waiting for anybody, or anything. Especially. Not. You."
Infuriatingly, the woman in green just gave her knee a condescending little pat before returning her hand to its perch. "That is just so perfect!" she said. "Oh, I could tell you were going to work out well, but I never thought that..." She gestured down at the table. "Tell me, Christine. What do you see in front of you right now?"
Christine tore her eyes away from the hand on her knee with great difficulty--the bitch was actually sliding it up a couple of inches like she thought Christine wouldn't even notice--to look at the table. "Nothing," she said. "I mean, a cup of coffee, a couple of syrup stains, and a used napkin, but nothing important. Why? What does it matter?"
The woman in green's fingernails brushed the inside of Christine's leg, just above her knee. "You don't see a plate, do you?" she asked, her voice teasing Christine with the insinuation of some secret that only she knew. "You ordered breakfast, didn't you?"
Christine furrowed her brow in annoyance, picking up the implications of the other woman's words and not liking them one little bit. "I, I already finished eating," she said, unable to avoid sounding defensive. "I was just doing a little people watching before I went home. It's a Sunday morning, I don't have anywhere I need to be, what's wrong with that?" She felt her hackles raising, her entire body tensing as if preparing for a fight. It wasn't just the woman's attitude--Christine felt like she absolutely had to refute the unspoken accusation for some reason.
The woman's giggle made it even worse. "Oh my gosh!" she said, putting her free hand to her lips as if to stifle a laugh so loud it would make the entire restaurant stare. "You don't remember being told to meet me here, you've spent the last hour just staring vacantly out the window, and Trevor still thought you might not be suitable? Oh, darling! That is just..." She squeezed Christine's leg, as though mere words couldn't convey the affectionate amusement she felt at Christine's actions.
Christine felt another spike of frustration at the woman's over-familiarity, but it was buried under a sudden, sinking feeling of anxiety that seemed to wash through Christine's brain like a wave of icy water. "An hour, no, I..." She heard the confusion in her voice as she stammered through a denial she couldn't quite make herself believe. "No, it couldn't have been that long, I just got here at, at ten o'clock..." She knew she could reach into her purse and pull out her phone to see what time it was, but somehow that would feel too much like admitting the strange woman sitting next to her had a legitimate argument. And Christine knew that couldn't be true.
"And it's almost noon now," the woman in green cut in smoothly, her hand petting Christine's leg with short, gentle strokes as she spoke. "We told you I would be here at eleven, we told you to get to the restaurant in time to finish your food before I arrived, and you did exactly as instructed. And when you needed to wait longer, you did it automatically and instinctively, without even being noticed. You obeyed perfectly, Christine. I'm very proud of you. You're a good girl."
Christine's head suddenly swam with pleasure. It came out of nowhere like a sudden summer rainstorm, a dizzying burst of pure joy that made Christine sway drunkenly in her seat for a moment as her eyes unfocused in helpless, euphoric delight. It wasn't even sexual pleasure... or at least it wasn't just sexual pleasure. Christine realized almost absent-mindedly that her panties were suddenly clinging to her skin as the sheer fabric became saturated with her arousal. But more than anything, it was a mingled sense of pride and utter elation that overwhelmed Christine's ability to think for a moment.
She came out of it to find the woman in green staring down at her with an indulgent smile on her face. "Wha, what..." It took Christine a minute to even find her voice again, let alone figure out what she wanted to say. She finally settled for, "What the FUCK?", delivered at a volume as loud as she dared without drawing the attention of everyone in the restaurant.
"You're very responsive, dear," the woman in green said, her fingernails now grazing the sensitive skin of Christine's inner thigh. "That's all. Perhaps a little stubborn at first, but I think that was just because you knew how easily your mind would accept our suggestions once you relaxed and let us in. You wanted to be a good girl, didn't you, Christine?"
Again that same wave of helpless bliss, that sense of soul-deep fulfillment at hearing those words. It felt like the woman in green was reaching right inside Christine's head and petting her mind with perfect praise, like the words translated in the back of Christine's brain to every kind of compliment she'd ever received in her life. Her personality, her intellect, her beauty, her spirit... 'good girl' seemed to hit every single one of those buttons at once and made her soak her fucking panties at the same time.