A Faery Tale Princess: A Stefan and Belinda Vignette

I shudder pleasurably as a million-million snowflakes dance inches from my nose. As far as the eye can see the grounds of Stefan’s castle are turning white, a winter wonderland just for us. I am safely inside of course, watching through the lead paned windows, warm in my long-skirted Victorian style dress, with its multiple petticoats. Don’t look at me like that. Stefan likes me elegant and I like making Stefan happy. How much of that is post-hypnotic conditioning I’m still not sure. Right now he’s very happy. He’s standing right behind me, long arms pulling me into his embrace.
“See doushenka? The winter snows set in. Time to don the Gloomy and Purposeless Trousers of Uncle Vanya and stoke the samovar.”
Unseen, I roll my eyes. Stefan feels the need to keep up this cod-Russian stuff to maintain the family tradition. One of his grandfathers was Russian. We think. Since he’s an orphan and I was abandoned as a child genealogy isn’t really an exact science for either of us.
Of course it would be harder for me to trace my family line. When he turned me from Brian, his childhood bully, into Belinda, his ideal girlfriend Stefan arranged to have any evidence that there ever was a Brian Jenkins altered or destroyed. That’s why I’m officially three years younger than I used to be and without any qualifications – pretty much utterly dependent on Stefan for anything my salary as a pathetically underpaid nursery school worker doesn’t cover.
Not that that’s much of a hardship. Stefan is a multi-millionaire and loves to shower me with treats. There’s nothing I can’t have as long as I accept I owe it all to him. I suppose there’s no control freak like a former geek who’s finally got the children’s home bully where he wants him – or her.
In a way I’m very lucky. Stefan is generous, kind, funny, affectionate, thoughtful, endearing and brilliantly, dazzlingly clever. If he hadn’t drugged me, hypnotically conditioned me, given me an unwanted sex change and made me into his demure yet passionate love slave I couldn’t find a word to say against him. The worst of it is, he is a genius – so smart that even though the best conditioning available in the world couldn’t directly change my heterosexuality he found a way to make me respond to him. He arranged for me to become aroused every time I became embarrassed. Right this minute I’m wearing a corset and French knickers under a dress. Exactly how embarrassed do you think I feel? Quite.
“Do you know what this reminds me of?” Stefan asks
“Tell me.”
“The beginning of Snow White.”
“Huh?”
“Do you know the story?”
“Not really. Tell me more?” Stefan sometimes forgets – his parents were very good ones right up until the car crash that killed them. Mine didn’t read me fairy tales or anything else. I’ve sort of got to like hearing them from him.
“The story begins when the Queen is sitting sewing by the window of a castle just like this one, on a winters’ day just like this one and pricks her finger with a needle. A drop of blood falls on the ebony of the window sash. She looks at it and thinks how beautiful a daughter would be who had lips as red as blood, skin as white as snow and hair as black as ebony. Nine months later Snow White is born and the Queen has her wish.”
“Stefan! “ I say in warning tones. “Are you comparing me to a fairy tale princess?!”
“Yes!” He says squeezing me so hard I can’t say anything at all for a moment. Stefan’s bear hugs are the only thing I know that makes me more breathless than wearing a tight corset. This may be a blessing. I’m trying not to ask him what a samovar is. (I know what doushenka means; it’s ‘my little soul’. For a kidnapping, brainwashing, forcibly feminising, mad scientist who plays computer games he can be very romantic.) It’s not that I don’t want to know what a samovar is; I do. It’s just that if I ask him I know what will happen. He will explain, in a lively, interesting fashion, and then he will be carried away by the expression he insists I always wear when I ask these sorts of questions. He calls it my ‘puzzled kitten’ look and I know the effect it will have.
First, he’ll kiss me and I’ll start to melt. He’ll caress me and I’ll tremble under his touch. Then he’ll pick me up and carry me over to the huge fur rug in front of the open fireplace where a cheery blaze of birch logs is roaring away. He’ll strip me, slowly, carefully. (OK, he’ll probably leave the corset on and just pop my breasts out of the top to play with. ) An hour of slow, masterful, insistent lovemaking later I’ll be lying spent in his arms and another inch of my soul will have been conquered and...and..and...Oh God, I’m so easy.
I turn in his arms, tilt my face up towards his wrinkle my nose and say “What’s a samovar?” He kisses me.
A few minutes later I’m lying underneath him wearing only my corset and trying to send up a silent prayer before I so lose control of myself that I can’t think.
Please God, I know I’m stuck as a girl and I’m helpless to change that. I know I’m stuck as Stefan’s girl and I’m helpless to change that. Please don’t make me more helpless, Dear Lord. Please don’t let me fall in love!