“I can’t help it if I can’t concentrate, Lizzie,” Paul said, a devilish gleam in his eye, badminton racket nonchalantly slung over his shoulder. “I mean, come on. My favourite top-heavy therapist alone in her office with a naked sex-slave?”

At that casual reference to my shape, I glared across the court in amused exasperation. Had it been anyone else, I’d have been a righteous fury. But Paul was my oldest and closest male friend. He’d been there in my darkest times, offering support and a shoulder to cry on during my battles to be taken seriously. He’d earned the right to be so irreverent. He’d earned my trust.

So there I was, hands indignantly on hips, eyes narrowed and glaring, head slightly cocked to one side. Paul grinned, appraising me insolently. I instantly realised how my baggy and still outthrust sweatshirt sabotaged my attempt to put him down. Top-heavy indeed.

With sudden determination, I readied my racket. “My serve, I believe. Try to keep your mind on the game this time.” I brushed a tangle of coppery hair back from my eyes, and fired a shuttlecock across the court. He was going to pay.

Mind you, I couldn’t really blame him, I thought as the memory sneaked back into my head. It was a potent image. A strange woman kneeling in my office, naked but for an emerald pendant resting in her cleavage, her eyes silently pleading as she looked up at me.

She’d walked into my office wearing nothing but a long raincoat, and had wasted no time discarding it, before babbling out her crazy story.

It was a long, hard-fought game. It almost succeeded in driving her from my mind.

Paul and I frequently exchanged anecdotes about our most interesting patients during these weekly games, always careful to leave out any details that might identify them. Paul enjoyed relating the racier antics of his patients, especially the exhibitionist and the nymphomaniac. I generally kept that sort of story to myself. Until now. It’s not every day you meet someone who thinks she’s a sex slave.

All too soon, our time on the court was up. As we caught our breath and packed away our rackets, bottles, and towels, Paul looked it me with concern. “You okay, Freckles? You seemed off your game, there, at the end.”

I chuckled to myself at the affectionate nickname. Remembering a shared joke, I raised my racket and cried theatrically, “They may take our lives, but they’ll NEVER take our freckles!”

Pleased to see him smiling, I hefted my bag over my shoulder, relieved no-one else was there to see my uncharacteristic hijinks. I was a different person with him. Literally – everyone else called me Beth.

“No, I’m fine,” I told him. “Just tired, it’s been a long day. I’m looking forward to bed.”

Paul raised his eyebrows suggestively. “Me too,” he smiled.

I rolled my eyes. “I can’t say anything with you around,” I pretended to complain. “So what are your plans – and no, that’s not an invitation!”

He sighed, unhappy about something. “Linda’s having a few workmates over for dinner. As the dutiful husband, I have to be there.”

I wondered if everything was okay at home, but he clearly wasn’t ready to say anything more so I left it at that. On the way to the showers, Paul broke the silence to ask, “So she really thought she was a sex-slave?”

“Paul!” People were passing us in both directions, but no-one seemed to be taking notice. Of course, my chest attracted the usual attention, despite the shapeless clothes I always wore. But I didn’t notice that any more. Not really.

I answered him quietly. “It’s hard to say, maybe she was a fantasist who got her kicks exposing herself. But she had quite an elaborate story.”

“Something about jewellery, you said,” Paul asked. To my relief, he’d lowered his voice - the topic was pretty embarrassing out here in public, but it demanded to be discussed.

“Yup. She claimed to be under the power of some secret cult, and that’s why she’d become a prostitute. All she needed to be free, for the curse to be lifted, was to submit, naked, to some authority figure like me, and for that person to take the supposedly enchanted necklace from her neck.”

As we walked, I pretended not to notice as Paul shifted his sports bag, slyly blocking the front of his shorts. He was imagining the scene I’d painted. It couldn’t compare to the reality. That perfect body, those perfect breasts…

Paul, remembering something, cheekily asked, “So was Lezzy Lizzie tempted by her offer?”

I growled at him. He knew how I’d hated that cruel nickname in college. So unfair. Because I was focussed on studying instead of partying the night away, I had to be a lesbian! But Paul didn’t mean anything by it – I knew his teasing was affectionate.

“Of course not,” I said seriously. “The last thing I needed was for her to transfer her submission…” I realised my voice had risen, and nervously glanced around before continuing quietly. “Her submission from some imaginary cult to me. She’d startled me, and I refused her abruptly. Before I could explain the dangers of transference, she grabbed her coat and ran out of the office crying.”

We’d reached the changing rooms, and Paul sighed wistfully. “You get all the best patients…” He was incorrigible. He glanced at his watch and looked startled, tapping its face to be certain. “I’ll have to forego the shower – I’m running later than I realised.”

It was a pretty graceless exit, even for Paul. As I entered the shower cubicle and stripped, I wondered if my story had affected him more than he let on. I was relieved for him – a unisex changing room might have been uncomfortable with that on his mind.

Not just HIS mind, I admitted reluctantly. The incident had me unsettled, so I pushed it from my mind and grabbed the shower gel.

As I soaped the sweat from my body, I found my thoughts drifting to my first lover, Mike. He’d been fascinated by my freckles, how they stood out against pale skin. “The same colour as your hair,” I remembered him saying, that first time, before the betrayal. My soapy hands retraced the path of his kisses from neck to soft, sensitive breasts, and back again. With eyes closed, I could see him again marvelling at the flush spreading across my heated flesh, as my hands worked their magic. He’d looked so handsome and seemed so sensitive, before he made my life hell. I remembered him turning his attention back to my freckles, wondering aloud, “Do they go all the way down?” My hands begin to investigate, following the frothy water snaking down my belly towards the heat churning below…

Whoa there, girl, my inner voice shouted, my hands jerking away from hot skin. I looked around anxiously, and breathed a sigh of relief – I was still alone. What is it with me, tonight? I grabbed the shampoo and vigorously washed my copper hair.

Actually, as a psychologist, I knew it made perfect sense. It was perfectly natural for my feelings to be unsettled by such an experience, for feelings of arousal and sexual recollections to suddenly surface. It was normal, especially given how long I’d been without a partner, a boyfriend. I’d seen a naked woman in a suggestive pose, that was all. It certainly didn’t mean I had any latent lesbian leanings. Of course not.

I wondered where she was now, that strange woman. Could I have helped her? I began to feel guilty at driving her away like that. But I had nothing to go on. She’d called herself April, but the address she’d given didn’t exist, leading me to suspect the name was false, too.

But there was something. If I could only remember. I saw her again in my mind. Green pendant dangling between swaying breasts as she knelt before me – an emerald cocooned in soft, golden flesh …

There was a hierarchy in the cult, she’d said. Amber was above green, and red was above amber –it was all about colours. Had she mentioned any other colours? Aha! Pink! She’d mentioned where she worked – the Pink Palace. I had a lead!

The door opened and closed; I turned off the water and started to dry my hair.

I wondered if she invented that place, too: Just another detail of her fantasy? But I had to check it out. Once I’d done that, I could put it behind me, conscience appeased. I’d have done more than my duty to her.

That settled, I dismissed her from my mind, grabbed my towel and wrapped it around me. I turned and opened the cubicle door. I looked at the naked woman kneeling at my feet. I froze.

April. Kneeling. Here. At my feet.

Impossible.

Naked. Full round breasts. Glint of green. Twin strips of silver rising to exposed neck.

It’s not real.

Face lifted to me. Lips. Full. Red.

It can’t be real.

Wide, blue eyes fixed piercingly on me. Yearning. Desperately Yearning.

It’s a dream.

A halo of golden hair. Cascading down over full breasts. Brushing against angry nipples. Twinkling green between.

A dream?

She shuffled forward on her knees, jamming the cubicle door open with her body. And with that, the frozen moment ended. My heart was pounding, hammering away at my ribcage. I could move again, and clutched the towel to my body, feeling its coarseness against my soft wet skin, its roughness irritating nipples into hardness. My jaw was moving, but no sound came out.

Those big blue eyes pleaded desperately with me. “You’re my only chance. My salvation.” She shifted her arms behind her back, as if offering her breasts to me, and I saw my own wild eyes reflected in green.

I looked around. We were alone. I was trapped. Panic rising within me, I tried to make sense of this. “What – How – But – You followed me!”

As I pleaded with her, the meaning of her words sunk in. “Get up!” Her fantasy. “Get out of my way!” She was making her fantasy real. “Someone could come in at any time!”

I had never felt more exposed – more naked, despite the towel. I squeezed my thighs together, hunched forward, made myself smaller. “It’s not magic, you have to see that!” I knew even as I spoke that it was useless. “There’s no curse, no cult. Just – just get up, for god’s sake!”

She didn’t budge, sitting there serenely with golden hair framing her deceptively angelic features.

Holding my towel protectively, I shuffled forward, trying to pass, pushing her back with my shin.

She moved quickly, her arms suddenly wrapped around the small of my back, her face pressing against my abdomen. I reeled backwards in a panic, slipping on the damp floor and nearly falling, instinctively grasping for the sides of the cubicle, towel forgotten.

How she held on to me, I don’t know, but she didn’t let me fall. I struggled against her grip, there was no moving her. I was wet and slippery, but I couldn’t escape.

When my struggles died down, she lifted her face to me, no longer pleading. No, now she looked confident, certain. “Imagine what they’ll think,” she said, nearly whispering with that infuriatingly soft, sultry voice, and I could feel her breath hot against my damp belly, goose bumps rising there and elsewhere. “What they’ll say when they come in. When they find the eminent Doctor Summers cavorting in the nude in public with a patient?”

I looked disbelieving at her, my mouth dry. She appeared to be considering it. “I expect it’ll make the evening news.”

She was insane.

“Please don’t do this,” I hated the desperation in my voice. “Please,” I whimpered, “just let me go.” Here I was, a once powerful professional woman, vision blurred by tears.

She smiled grimly, determined, and said nothing. And waited.

The changing room door started to open and sounds from the corridor drifted in. I stiffened, my heart ready to explode, but whoever it was changed their minds and the door closed again.

I could breathe again. A lucky escape. This time. It couldn’t last. She had me.

I looked down at her. She knew she had me. I sighed. “What do I do?”

“Take the green, Mistress.” How could she sound so calm, so serene? Then I remembered. She was a nutcase.

It was only a pendant, a stupid necklace. All this trouble… I wanted to strangle her. Stay calm. Get through this. When I’m dressed and far away, I can have her arrested. Throw away the key. First, get through this.

She leaned back, releasing me from that iron grip of hers and resumed her former pose. Chest thrust out, face uplifted.

Standing on shaking legs, released from her grip, I considered running. Just leaping over her and running for the door. But I knew now she’d come after me. I’d be running, naked, through a busy sports centre, with a crazed and equally naked woman at my heels…

I’d never live it down. All those battles to prove I was more than a sexy redhead, more than just ‘a pair of big tits’ – all that would have been for nothing. I’d always be the big-breasted therapist who cavorted in the nude with her patients. It would never go away. Everything I’d worked for – all of it – gone.

There was no choice. None at all. As I looked down at her, her expression shifted from determination to satisfaction. She knew she had won.

“Take the green, Mistress.”

I took a deep breath, and lifted the silver chain over her head. The stone was a beautiful piece of work – at the size of a marble, it was too big to be a real emerald. Too big, and too reflective. It really was beautiful. I could see my face in several of its facets. And repeated inside, all the way to infinity. So deep.

“You have to put it on,” she said urgently, breaking me from my reverie. I tried to ignore her rising excitement, her heaving chest, her flushed cheeks. My heart was racing – the nightmare was almost over.

I slipped the necklace over my head, and felt the cool green stone tumble down my chest, and for a moment I saw myself as others might – that stone settling into a breathtaking, natural cleavage. I was bursting with excitement. It was over!

Then she leaned forward and gently kissed my pubic mound, and took my breath away.

My legs buckled and I fell back, sliding down the cubicle wall. She kissed me again. And again.

I was lying on my back, breathing made ragged by her hot breath against my thighs, her head obscured by the tremulous rise and fall of my breasts. Had my nipples ever been that stiff, that hard? I wondered in a strange moment of clarity.

She pushed my feet up towards my buttocks, raising my knees either side of her, while my hands clawed helplessly at the cubicle walls at my sides, fingers clenching and unclenching nervelessly, my head rolling back, mouth open in a silent scream.

She bent forward, her lips dancing over my mound and thighs as my body bucked and squirmed, spasming with each electric contact. Each wet kiss drove the breath from my lungs with an audible grunt, a wheezing intake of breath signalling those yearning moments between touches.

Her hands slid under my buttocks, lifting my body. I had no purchase against the slippery floor, no way to force my loins onto her face. So whose were those hands stroking my abdomen, sliding clumsily up to my breasts, artlessly grasping, crushing, squeezing, kneading, tugging... Oh, god no… My hands. My own treacherous hands.

I was at her cruel mercy, as she now used that tongue, that expert tongue, slithering around the centre of my world, teasing, tormenting. Around, but not in! Go in! Stab it into my heart! She was in control, denying the thrusting demands of my pelvis, straining to envelop her. I’d never felt such excitement, such lust, such need.

From a great distance, I could hear my own voice moaning, groaning, pleading. And then her tongue paused at the edge of the precipice, and my body stiffened, my breath frozen in my throat, waiting, waiting. Please! Oh god, please!

She lifted her head, my lust glistening on her face. No! Don’t stop!

Her scorching gaze travelled up my wet, shining body, lingering lustily for a moment on the emerald crushed between my breasts. I gasped, breath escaping in juddering gasps. Or was she enjoying the view of my hands gripping, fingers digging into soft flesh, trying to push me over the brink without her help?

Our eyes met, and her expression became sad, even apologetic. My heart stopped again, and my eyes widened in panic. I thought she was going to stop, to leave me like this. No! The floodgates opened: “I’m so close, so close, don’t stop please god don’t stop please fuck me fucking FUCK ME!”

I was incoherent with desire, whimpering with passion, dying with need, and she released me from that torment: Her tongue plunged into me like lightning, and my world exploded.

And again she thrust that soft spear, and again, and again, and explosion after explosion seared my body. A moment’s respite, filled only with my whimpering sobs. Her teeth gently scraped around my engorged clitoris, and I stiffened in terrified ecstasy. My world contracted to a single point, throbbing with agonised delight: her teeth holding still, holding, holding… and suddenly, BITE!

....

I slowly woke to the sound of my own gentle moaning, one hand gently squeezing and tugging on a nipple, the other softly stroking between my thighs.

“Are – are you alright?” My eyes shot open at the unfamiliar voice. A woman looking down at me, at once concerned and disgusted, her child hiding behind her skirt. A man hung back, trying not to look and failing.

I was still weak from… from… Oh god. My body tingled, muscles twitching and trembling with remembered pleasure. I leapt to my feet, swaying at the sudden rush to my head. Another woman entered the changing room, stopping at the sight of me, and a third woman walked right into her back. April was gone.

Suppressing nausea and shame, I rushed to my locker. I had to get out of here, away from here, from where – where it happened. Sweeping a tangle of copper hair back from my eyes, I slipped on my suit jacket and fastened a single button. Ignoring the stimulation it caused my sensitive flesh, I pulled on my trousers, trying not to groan. I was not going to touch myself! Not here! No!

I stuffed the rest of my clothes into my sports bag, fleeing the changing room. As I glanced back, I noticed a discarded sign lying on its side.

OUT OF ORDER

Please use other changing rooms

So that’s why no-one had disturbed us. She was clever. Especially with her tongue. Stop that! Don’t think! Just move!

In my car, there is only the present. I’m driving, driving, driving. Adrenaline courses through my body, as the engine purrs like a woman’s desire. The throbbing seat cradles my back and thighs like a lover, its warmth reaching even deeper.

Faster! I take a corner at speed, tires screeching cries of pleasure. A car appears in front of me: I hit the brakes, slide forward across the seat, trousers dragging across my naked folds like April’s kisses.

Faster! Pedal to the metal, the car surges forward, rushing towards climax.

Faster! Faster and faster I go, passing car after car, almost caressing their sleek metal bodies with my own.

Faster! Desperately trying to outrace the incessant urgings of my needful flesh.

Faster! Nearly there. Just a little more!

So close! I whip around another corner, scraping my metal flesh against a protective railing. My hands work the steering wheel frantically, as if grasping and clutching a lover’s body in the throes of climax.

Suddenly a wall looms in front of me, and I hit the brakes, their screeches like the wailing of a banshee. I realise in a moment of crystal certainty, “I’m going to die!” But my life doesn’t flash before me – I am looking at changing room ceiling as April’s tongue pierces my hungry cunt.

That’s it! Yessss! I stiffen in climax, hands fixed to the wheel, feet stuck to the floor, the car’s screeches matching my own, and we hurtle into the wall…

I didn’t die.

The wall – actually the back of a truck waiting at a junction – pulled away just in time, and my car slipped into the space it had occupied like a tongue into a needy… Oh no you don’t, I thought, shaking my head to clear it.

I was surprised at how calm I felt. Numb.

I noticed a car park, and pulled in on autopilot. I parked, switched off the ignition. As my head fell against the steering wheel, the false calm shattered. I screamed into the leather. Then I sobbed. And sobbed.

It passed. I sat back in the driving seat, and exhaled, long and hard. What the hell had happened to me?

I’d fucked a patient… A female patient… And it was good… So very good.

My head was swimming, thoughts dashing against each other, failing to make sense of what had happened.

Was I a lesbian? Why had this case, this woman of all women, this clever and devious slut, triggered such a response in me?

I’d never looked at a woman like that before. Or had I? As a therapist, I knew how easily the mind can deceive itself. There’s no way that kind of passion came out of nowhere. I had no choice but to admit it – I liked girls. Well, one girl anyway.

Or maybe that was too simple, too obvious. Was it the danger of discovery? Or maybe something about her desperation, or her fantasy, hit on a part of myself that I’d buried beneath conscious thought. Her submission?

Mmmm, no question, I did feel a tingling in interesting places when I thought about that. Then again, I couldn’t think about April without remembering her tongue…

Damn, I needed to see her again. To get some answers. And maybe something more…

Get a grip, Elizabeth. You just nearly spread yourself and your car across three counties because of that woman. Get a grip!

Maybe it was for the best that she had made her escape. I clearly needed time to process the evening’s events. What an understatement! My giggling sounded loud and fragile to my ears, and I forced myself to stop, dispelling rising hysteria.

I breathed deeply, short sharp breaths the way I’d taught some of my patients. I was beginning to feel sane again, more like my old self. I can worry about all this later, I thought, as I turned the key and revved the engine. I was relieved to hear it start after the punishment I’d put it through.

I realised I had no idea where I was and looked around and beyond the car park. There must be a street sign, a landmark, something…

A flashing neon pink sign floated in front of me.

PINK PALACE

Where your Fantasies come true

I couldn't breath. It was impossible. I suppressed a sudden urge to scream.

April’s fantasy was true – she’d been under a spell, and now I, wearing the necklace, was spellbound and summoned to her place of slavery.

The idea felt oddly enticing, and I may have entertained the fantasy a little longer because of that.

I grabbed the chain dangling from my throat, and raised my hand to tear off the necklace, to hurl it away. But I was a scientist, I remembered, as the emerald caught my eyes, glinting with reflected streetlight. It was just a stone. A fake stone, at that! I wasn’t going to give in to superstitious nonsense. I was a rational woman.

It was true, the chance of me ending up here after driving around like a maniac was small, tiny. But the same would be true wherever I’d ended up, and any place at all would be more likely than magic! It was more of a miracle that I was still alive. Strange coincidences like this happen all the time.

Besides, it matched my eyes, and went well with my reddish hair. Looking down, I saw my jacket’s single button straining, magnificent breasts threatening to burst out, unfettered by their usual constraints. I released the chain, letting the gem fall: any observer’s eyes would be drawn to the glittering stone nestling comfortably in the enticing swell of my pale cleavage. April had the body of a glamour model, but she had nothing on these!

At that thought of April, my heart beat faster. What if April had been telling the truth about working here? Someone might know where she lives.

I had to go in…