“Of course you are not a little imp,” Jade says, tracing one finger around Dolly’s ear with deliberate laziness. “You’re my jackal, did I hear that right?” [I]Dolly dazedly nods up and down, somehow managing not to flick her ear.[/i] “That’s right. My little pet.” Jade stretches, lifts one foot in the air with a moan of luxury, digs her nails in and feels the feedback, the stifled shiver, the way Dolly’s tail is smooshed up between her thighs and can’t go swish swish like it clearly wants to. She has draped herself over Dolly’s swaddled body, perfectly and impossibly balanced on Dolly’s back, and she visualizes herself despite the fact that most of her is outside of Dolly’s vision. A little flourish of processing power, a preload that makes her feel more present, more tangible.

More real.

She can envision the swaddling, too. She has a better memory than Dolly; she knows the cloth from that one quick glance, can mull it over, recreate it in her own thoughts. Inconvenient that Dolly can’t see the knot, just feel it pressed down against her by Jade’s phantom weight. Another flourish, but this one much more necessary. She needs her Dolly to feel her, to experience her. She’d explode if she couldn’t make that happen for the girl of her dreams.

But it’s just. That wicked grin. That insolence. That fluster, that potential. What’s the difference between being interested in someone and being hot for someone? Is there a difference? She wants to push, wants to know, used Dolly as her pawn in the opening of a game she’s going to win, and letting Dolly get tied up by someone else was just part of that. Besides, it’s giving her ideas. Sashes, scarves, bandages… wrapping around and around and around Dolly, until she’s completely covered… dangling her, or trapping her, or making her hop… all things they could indulge in later, all data points that were better when proven in the primary reality rather than just theory, outside of the dreams she wove for her bride.

So why does she want to dig in her nails?

“I wonder what she’ll do with you,” Jade says, and drags one nail slowly up the inside of Dolly’s ear, feeling how Dolly tenses up underneath her and holds her breath, toes curling, eyes rolling back ever so slightly. “Eyes on the fashion show, my jackal. I want to know how a bride is meant to be flaunted here.” [i]Dolly dutifully returns her attention to the beautiful dresses, the, the dragons, the waves, the pink, it looks so pretty, and she blinks away the tears as her body reacts to being told that her sensitive little ear is being played with. Nobody else can see what Jade’s doing with her, in the middle of the room, and nobody can see her gag, but everybody can see if she’s squirming, and she can’t do that, she’s trying so hard not to embarrass herself any further. When Jade pinches her ear gently between finger and thumb, Dolly lets out a strangled little gasp, only maybe barely audible to Angela Victoria Miera Antonius, and clenches around her tail.[/i] “What do the Terenians do with their prisoners? Strip searches, probably.” [i]A muffled whimper, Dolly imagining being pulled out of her dress, examined from all angles, cuffed and collared.[/i] “And then… they’d try to make you [i]deny me.[/i] To bow down to foreign gods.”

More hands. Pulling the cocoon closer, nails barely behaving themselves, working over [i]both[/i] ears right on the edges, in circles. Jade’s simulated heart hammers and her head spins. Hers. Her Dolly. Hers to protect and punish, hers to guide through her life and reward with her presence. It would make no sense to giddily run scenarios of Dolly being threatened, forced to her knees before whatever commerce-gods the Consortium were rumored to worship, faced with punishment, increasingly strenuous bondage, increasingly forceful rebukes, as she refuses to deny her goddess. It would make no sense at all. It would be a waste to run that scenario in her head and get angry at the thought of a hypothetical Dolly hanging her head and succumbing, and being rewarded with the blandishments of her captors.

It would. And yet.

“Don’t worry,” Jade purrs, and licks the back of Dolly’s ear, drags her tongue up and feels Dolly clamping down on the squeal she wants to unleash. “No matter what she does to you, no matter how she tries to ruin your pride, no matter how she humiliates my pretty, darling bride, I’ll be here, and together we’ll make her eat those words. [i]Everything[/i] she does to you? I’ll remember it. And the reward of my faithful bride will be seeing Angela Victoria Miera Antonius succumb to [i]me.[/i]”

And she stops, and she waits, and the microseconds stretch out. She is hyper aware of the feedback she’s receiving, the dragon robe extending into infinity, the buzz of the crowd and the noise of the music and the huff of Dolly’s breath isolated and picked apart and locked in stone chests, the strain of not [i]knowing[/i] exploding her mind into strained oblivion.

[i]And inside the cocoon, Dolly thinks about dancing with Angela on twin leashes while wearing just pink silk robes with dragons on them, and about the ways that Terenians don’t even really know that they smell, and about power plays in a goddess’s harem, and about the indignant noises that Angela was making with Jade’s mark on her mech’s thigh. And Dolly nods.[/i] And Jade internally melts in delirious relief, and covers it up by letting her hands sink through the tablecloth and stretching in luxurious satisfaction as Dolly’s eyes threaten to bug out of her skull.

“Now. I hope that you memorized the order of presentations down there,” Jade continues, and what she means is [i]I love you I love you I love you please keep loving me and thinking about me and appreciating what I do for you.[/i] “Because I remember, and if my forgetful little ditz can’t answer my questions later, well, I think she will deserve punishment, don’t you?”

And Dolly makes a blushy, tiny nod, and she means it.

[Both Dolly and Jade are marking Smitten with Angela, though it’s just a crush for now. I think it’s pretty clear how Dolly pursing Angela risks Jade overthinking herself into petty jealousy of a “real girl,” and how Jade risks letting Dolly feel like she’s splitting her focus (and how Angela must be new and intriguing and alien). Angela gets a String on both of them, and Dolly and Jade mark Harmony 2.]