Never Have I Ever

Those poor, doomed fuckers were going to regret this.

Okay, so technically speaking they were playing for pennies. And okay, yes, nobody was exactly taking the game seriously. And maybe yes, fine, it wasn't exactly something for Megan to be proud of that she could clean up at 'Never Have I Ever' even at the age of twenty-three. But still, she was reasonably certain that there wasn't a person in the room she couldn't beat. Tonight alone, Chelsea had come back from accompanying Cole on least one 'beer run' with her skirt on backward, and Wendy and Dave were just about single-handedly responsible for the second trip to the liquor store. Lucy was so stoned they pretty much had to drag her over to the couch to get her to participate, and Justin...

Megan glanced over at her new boyfriend, trying not to let her sinister glee show in her innocent blue eyes. They'd been dating for a few months now, and Megan knew that Justin had more sexual experience than her (not that

that

was particularly difficult, she admitted in the privacy of her own head). But every time she tried to find out more about it, she ran into this little enigmatic smile that wouldn't admit even a hint of what lay in his past. It wasn't any of her business, of course; he was sweet and kind to her, he didn't mind that she liked to spend most of her evenings at home, and he never had to say a word about his past if he didn't want to.

Maybe he was even doing it for her benefit. Maybe he thought that if she knew what he got up to before they started dating, she might start psyching himself out about his interest in a blonde chubby virgin with coke-bottle glasses and thighs that rubbed together when she walked. Maybe she'd start comparing herself to sylph-like Lucy with the pale perfect skin and the hourglass figure, or wonder if Justin really liked a woman like Chelsea who kept a spare pair of panties in her purse 'just in case'. Maybe Megan really didn't want to find out as bad as she thought she did. And whether she did or not, Justin had a right to privacy. Megan got that. Really she did.

But.

Megan hadn't exactly steered his buddies (and two former girlfriends!) into a game that was pretty much guaranteed to force him to open up about his sex life in front of people who could call him on it if he tried to bullshit his way out of any awkward questions. But she also hadn't exactly been reticent about mentioning her winning record, either. And Megan would be lying if she said she didn't know exactly what that would do to a group of slightly stoned, slightly drunk grad students with a competitive streak.

They didn't know what was about to hit them. And maybe Megan might find out what that enigmatic little smile hid... assuming she really wanted to know.

She sat down on Justin's left, Dave's right, with Wendy past Dave and Lucy past Wendy and Cole squeezed in between Lucy and Chelsea to complete the circle on the other side of Justin. "So who starts first?" she asked brightly, holding up all ten of her alabaster fingers up in the air and wiggling them with just a touch of smugness. These poor bastards had no idea what they were in for.

Justin held up his own fingers and said, "Why don't you start? Since you're so confident." He gave Megan that enigmatic smile of his, the one that made her shiver just a little deep inside and made her wonder sometimes just exactly why she bothered saving herself for marriage. She squeezed her legs together, hoping no one noticed, and forced the thought out of her head with a determination born of long practice.

"Okay," Megan said, looking at the small forest of fingers in front of her. "Never have I ever... had a beer." No point in starting small, right? She watched as all five of her opponents folded their thumbs into the palms of their hands with a look of dismayed resignation on their faces. They didn't even bother to call her on it-when she'd spent the entire night politely declining offers of alcohol, none of them even wondered if she might have given in to temptation on another occasion.

Dave went next. He had a confident, slightly inebriated smirk on his face that suggested he thought he had a winning gambit. "Never have I ever," he said, looking slowly around the circle before continuing, "sucked a dude's cock." Megan and Justin's hands didn't move, but Megan was a little bit stunned to see that Cole's little finger dropped right along with Wendy and Lucy and Chelsea's. Not that she was grossed out or anything, but... Megan had led a pretty strict and sheltered childhood, and most of her social engagements were so thoroughly regimented and chaperoned that there was never a chance to learn anything real about the people she called her friends. She was in grad school before she even met someone who was openly gay. Finding out that one of her new friends was bisexual surprised her a little.

Wendy's turn shocked her even more. "Never have I ever eaten a woman's pussy," she retorted, giving Dave a sharp and triumphant look, and Megan watched as Dave, Lucy, Cole, Chelsea and her own boyfriend all dropped another finger off their counts. Not that she-not that he should, should feel bad about it or anything. He totally shouldn't. It was fine if he, um... if he w-went down on a, a woman and did. Did licking things. With his tongue. Oh god. Megan could feel a fierce blush spreading across her pasty face, one that burned all the way up her forehead and all the way down her neck. She only hoped they thought it was just embarrassment and not the wild mingling of dismay and arousal she actually felt.

Lucy leaned in, her eyes gleaming with excitement. "I've taken molly," she said confidently, her amused smirk melting into confusion when nobody else's fingers went down. She sat there for a long moment, staring in utter bewilderment at the rest of the group. "...um?" she said at last, pointedly glancing at everyone else's hands in turn.

"It's 'Never Have I Ever'," Justin gently reminded her. "You're supposed to tell us the things you haven't done, not the things you have."

"Oh, right!" Lucy said, breathing an almost cartoonish sigh of relief. "Right right right. Sorry. Um, Never have I ever, um... eaten pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving." She grinned widely as everyone, even Megan, was forced to drop a finger at that. "It's true!" she said, giggling just a tiny bit with excitement. "It always looks good, but then when you cut into it, it's just... mush."

Megan fumed a tiny bit-that was almost like cheating, really-but looking at the hands of the others relieved her worries. Cole and Chelsea were down almost a full five fingers, and Justin, Dave and Wendy weren't far behind. Even Lucy was further along than she was, and Megan hadn't even cracked open her stash of recreational drug questions. She had this in the bag. They were all going down, every single one of them. She could bet her last penny on it, if she somehow wound up in a situation where she only had one penny instead of the entire handful sitting in front of her. She was going to win each and every round, she was sure of it.

And then Cole said, "Never have I ever been hypnotized." And Megan watched as her little finger curled into the palm of her hand right along with everyone else's.

"Um, w-wait, hang on, guys," she stammered, staring in confusion at the bent and tucked-away digit. "I, I don't know why I did that, I've never-" She tried to raise it back up, but her muscles wouldn't obey her mental commands for some reason. No matter how hard or intensely she glared at her little finger, it simply refused to move back into position. "I, um, there was a-a show at my high school, but I didn't volunteer, I was kind of spooked by the whole thing-"

Megan blushed even more fiercely as the others all stared at her, as though they could tell that she was eliding just a little bit of the truth. She was a little bit weirded out by the way that Doctor Don, Christian Hypnotist, was able to put all the other students into a trance 'for the Lord', but it wasn't because it frightened her. It was because it fascinated her. She wondered all night long what it felt like to go limp and boneless and sag into the firm, confident grip of the hypnotist as he whispered softly in that smooth, honeyed voice of his. It stuck with her, popping back into her head at odd moments. Maybe there was a reason for that?

Maybe she'd volunteered after all. Maybe Doctor Don had told her to forget going up on stage that night, and her conscious mind had followed along because she didn't like being the center of attention anyway but deep down, some part of her knew the truth? And maybe that part of her knew that it would be cheating to say she didn't, and so it was keeping her finger down because she was too honest to do something like that. That had to be it. Megan relaxed slightly, giving the others a nervous smile. "Never mind," she said. "Let's just keep going."

It didn't surprise Megan when her ring finger lowered, either, as Chelsea took her turn and said, "Never have I ever been given a suggestion to forget being hypnotized." That was just Doctor Don again, the dorky entertainer hired by her dorky private school for their dorky senior lock-in. It was a little weird that Dave, Wendy, and Lucy all lowered a finger as well-was there an epidemic of stage hypnotists going around or something? But it didn't worry her or anything. It made perfect sense. Just a quirky little thing she learned about herself tonight. She and Justin would laugh about it as he walked her back to her apartment. No biggie.

Then Justin went. "Never have I ever spent the night in bed with a man," he murmured, his enigmatic grin returning as he watched Megan's middle finger slowly and spontaneously lower itself down to her palm.

She wasn't the only one-Wendy, Lucy, Cole, Chelsea and even Dave got tagged with that one ("I used to play varsity hockey, we had a couple of overnight trips!") But Megan couldn't stop feeling like everyone was staring at her the same way she was staring at her own fingers. She tried lifting them, but it felt like she was struggling against a great, impossible weight that she couldn't lift even if she pulled with her entire body, let alone a single tiny digit that didn't need to be particularly strong to hold a compass and ruler. Her brain seemed to be entirely convinced she'd spent the night in a man's bed. And Megan knew that wasn't right.

It, it was a rule. Even after four months of dating Justin, it was still a rule. Definitely before Justin as well, although it wasn't a rule she had that much of an opportunity to break before going to grad school and getting out from under the influence of her parents and her parents' friends and her friends' parents. No spending the night with the opposite sex, not even platonically. Megan had put a hotel room on her dad's credit card once or twice rather than break that rule. It was a bedrock certainty of her existence, and one that couldn't be explained away by Doctor Don, Christian Hypnotist. Megan couldn't begin to understand what was going on.

Everyone stared at her expectantly. It took Megan almost a full thirty seconds to realize they were just waiting for her to take her turn. "Um... never have I ever smoked a joint?" she mumbled weakly, hoping to just get the game over with and get control of her fingers back. She had to get at least a few of them with that one.

Sure enough, everyone lowered a finger (Lucy lowered two until Wendy whispered something in her ear and she raised it again), but Megan couldn't bring herself to enjoy her temporary triumph. She was too busy trying to pry her digit away from her palm and failing miserably. She felt like reaching in with her other hand and physically separating her index finger from the warm, sweaty flesh it seemed to be glued to, but the thought of making a spectacle of herself like that froze her in place. Equally, she couldn't imagine blurting out to everyone, "I haven't slept with Justin yet!" even though she knew it was true. It just seemed like the sort of thing only a guilty person would say. And whatever her treacherous body might suggest, Megan wasn't sleeping with anyone.

Or so she thought until Dave said, "Never have I ever been fucked by a guy." And her index finger snapped shut onto her thumb like a Venus fly trap.

This time it wasn't her imagination. They really were all looking at her. Wendy, Lucy, and Chelsea stared directly at Megan with an amused, sarcastic expression on their faces as they lowered their fingers, with Chelsea raising an eyebrow as if to say, 'Welcome to the club.' Megan wanted to bury her face in her hands and never look at another human being again-she'd tried not to be judgy about Justin's exes, really she hadn't, but... the way she'd talked about winning this game, they knew. They all knew that she was more than a little bit proud of going all the way through college and two years of grad school without losing her virginity. And now somehow, some way, her own subconscious was lying to everyone about it.

"Um," she sputtered, acutely aware of everyone's eyes on her. "I, um, I don't..." Her voice dried up to a tiny squeak in her throat, then faded away to nothing. She tried again. "I... I don't know what's up with my fingers tonight," she rasped, wishing for a glass of water to drink or maybe just pour on her head to cool the burning sensation suffusing her entire face. "I think they're not w-working right. Is that, um, possible? Can you get, like, muscle cramps in your fingers?"

Wendy smirked knowingly. "I think I can shed a little light on it. Never have I ever followed a post-hypnotic suggestion from my boyfriend." Lucy's finger went down. So did Chelsea's, almost knocking her out of the round. And Megan's other thumb picked that exact moment to tuck itself into her palm as though it knew something she didn't.

She looked over at Justin, her eyes wide with astonishment and confusion. "I, I don't-did, did you...?" Megan's voice trailed into bewildered silence once again, her mind reeling as she tried to process the sequence of events she'd just witnessed and participated in. She looked at her own hand as if the lowered fingers held some sort of hidden code that she could use to divine her own actions-actions she'd apparently forgotten under the influence of a hypnotic trance, actions that included... what? Sleeping in Justin's bed? Letting him fuck her? Forgetting she'd done it? Following his suggestions without even remembering it?

It made a perverse sort of sense, she had to admit. She'd been interested in hypnosis for years, ever since watching that stupid stage show and trying very hard to pretend it wasn't absolutely fascinating to watch one person gain such complete control over another person's mind and body. If Justin had told her that he was able to, to do something like that, Megan might have confessed her interest to him. She might even have asked him to give her a little demonstration. And once she was under...

Megan didn't even want to think about it. But her fingers didn't lie, and they wouldn't let her lie to herself any longer. It wasn't just an 'interest', not if she was being honest with herself. She'd spent years, almost since the first day she got settled into her dorm room at college, stifling her moans and gasps and whimpers every night as she fantasized about staring into someone's dark, mesmerizing eyes and losing control of her will and her thoughts. It was her constant companion, keeping her from going insane with pent-up lust as she tried to save her virginity for a marriage she wasn't interested in to a boy who only existed in the most hypothetical of senses. She was always horny. And hypnosis always made her wet.

If Justin had hypnotized her, she might have confessed everything to him. If he'd given her the opportunity to forget, Megan knew full well that she would have leapt at the chance to accept her fantasies without any of the accompanying guilt and shame. She would have begged him to take away her memories, leaving her a sweet innocent Christian girl by day and his mindless, obedient fucktoy by night. Would she have even wanted to remember? Ever? Megan didn't know. She couldn't think. She was suddenly, acutely conscious of a pounding, throbbing heat between her legs.

It was enough to make her sigh in helpless lust, watching her ring finger lower as Lucy remorselessly filled in the silence with, "Never have I ever gone to an orgy without even knowing it." The dark-haired young woman followed up her words by pulling her top off, revealing an expanse of smooth, soft pink flesh that Cole began to tease with his free fingers, but Megan couldn't quite take all that in just yet. Her head was still echoing with the words, the implications, the hidden promise that her deep self seemed to have been waiting months to hear.

It didn't matter anymore when Cole added, "Never have I ever given Justin a handjob," and she helplessly lowered her ring finger with a thrill of arousal that made her openly squirm and wriggle in front of everyone. Wendy and Dave were getting naked already, and Lucy was already playing with her pussy as she stared at Megan's slack, stunned expression of vacant lust with dark, glittering eyes. Lucy was out of the game now-of course she was, she was Justin's ex, of course they'd played together the same way he and Chelsea had, the same way he and Megan had without her even realizing it-but she looked like she was already on to the next activity. And this one was entirely unchaperoned.

Chelsea was out too, so it was Justin's turn to look into Megan's dazed, glassy eyes and say, "Never have I ever stripped naked for Master in front of his friends." She felt her middle finger lower, making it more that a little difficult to squirm her pale and quivering body out of her clothing, but somehow she managed. It was as though she was compelled, as though an irresistible command tugged at the back of her brain that she couldn't even remember, telling her how important it was to follow Justin's instructions. To do everything he told her. To think only the thoughts and recall only the memories that he put into her drowsy, compliant mind. God, no wonder her panties had a damp spot when she took them off.

But now it was her turn. She still had a chance to keep going. Maybe even to win, although it seemed unlikely given that Justin would go before she did and he still had almost a whole hand up. But it was just barely possible that Megan could salvage a little of her pride, even if it was hard to claim that she still had her dignity now that she was naked and openly squeezing her thighs together in helpless, panting arousal. "Never have I ever..." she gasped, trying to come up with something clever, something she could really get the others with. It was hard to think when she was this turned on, but she knew she could get it. "N-never have I ever..."

Justin smiled. "Dropped for Master," he suggested, his voice smooth and calm and irresistible in her ears. Megan couldn't help following a suggestion like that. Not after months of programming that sapped her will away without her even realizing it, leaving behind only sweet, somnolent ecstasy every time she obeyed Justin's hypnotic commands and sank deeper into his power. The words tugged at her brain, inexorably drawing her lips into motion. Megan couldn't fight it. She didn't even really want to.

"Dropped for-Master?" Megan blinked heavily, her foggy brain trying to parse the sentence she'd just uttered. She couldn't use that one, because it wasn't true. But if it wasn't true for her, then she had to lower her finger. Those were the rules, weren't they? And if she lowered her finger, she lost. She was defeated. She had utterly, totally surrendered to... to Justin's will. To Master's will. He was her Master. How could Megan possibly have forgotten that?