Several hours later

The Baxter Building’s master bedroom stood dark and silent aside from the soft breathing of Jean’s sleeping master. She could hear his other servants; Ororo wasn’t a particularly quiet sleeper and neither was Sue, but they weren’t her concern at the moment. From her position at his side, she observed him as he slumbered. He looked so peaceful and content and she understood with no small amount of pride that it was the promise of her protective telepathic presence that made it possible.

She truly loved serving him. Intellectually, she knew that this was only because his powers had made it so, but the fact that he’d mind-controlled her, shunting away her formidable mental defenses like they were nothing and completely dominating her will with his own only turned her on. Her former self would have felt violated and enraged beyond words at Mark for stripping away her identity and replacing it with one that served him faithfully and obediently.

The new Jean that had been born in the ashes of the old felt only gratitude. Like most individuals, she valued her own life, and she knew she would never have existed without Mark. It was that fact above all others that bound her to him willingly (insofar as she had a will of her own). He was her doting creator; a father, a lover, and a god all rolled into one. Her one light in the darkness of a bleak, uncaring world. How could she not love the man that had given her the gift of life itself?

It was this thought that drove her as even now her psychic powers were hard at work scanning the Baxter Building and the surrounding city blocks for anything or anyone that harbored even the slightest inkling of ill will towards her master. She gave Mark's servants routine mental scans, ensuring that they remained loyal to their master.

Sue Storm required no telepathic reinforcement. It had been a stroke of genius on Mark's part to combine Sue's maternal instinct with her sexuality and an all-encompassing need to serve Mark. The voluptuous blonde would never have given her duties as a nurturing caregiver any degree of scrutiny, for they were an irreplaceable pillar of her very identity. It made her easy for Mark to corrupt and bend to his will.

“You should be asleep,” his voice was soft, barely audible even in the quiet of the Baxter Building’s insulated walls. To her, however, they might as well have the loudest words ever spoken on Earth, so absent was her willingness to tolerate even a single request of his going unheard.

Jean bit her lip. After the discovery of The Thing’s seeming immunity to Mark’s tactile mind control ability, it had been her quick thinking that saved him from the stone behemoth’s wrath. Now, the entity formerly known as Ben Grimm stood vigilant outside the master bedroom, ready to destroy anything that threatened its master.

After Mark had finished fucking Sue Storm, he asked Jean to form and maintain a constant telepathic link to him so she could respond immediately to anything he considered a threat. Much of the rest of her day had been spent with her master as she familiarized him with the inner workings of her mind.

The psychic link the two of them now shared was far deeper than any she had formed with her own husband or anyone else. She held nothing back from him as she helped him explore her mind. All of her secrets, desires, and thoughts were laid bare before him to poke and prod and observe as he willed. At any moment he wished, he could feel what she felt, know what she was thinking, or command her outright with a mere thought. Her mind was open to him like no other.

“There are so many things out there that could hurt you, Master. I have to keep you safe,” she replied.

He gave her a soft smile that caused her heart to skip a beat. “You’re worried.”

She nodded at him, a mere formality due to their bond.

“I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you,” she said, uncaring of the fact that to anyone unaffected by Mark’s light she might have sounded like a schoolgirl with an unhealthy obsession with her crush.

“I thought I gave you a command to know that I’d always be with you?” one of his hands reached beneath her to grope her breasts.

Jean inhaled sharply. The mere sensation of being touched by her master made her feel elated beyond words. She wondered if this was what a religious woman might feel if she were given the honor to bask in the presence of her god. “Maybe, but you didn’t command me to stop worrying.”

Mark appraised her thoughtfully for a moment before she felt something trip her psychic senses. Her master must have noticed it too through their link, because he looked at her questioningly.

She reached out with her mind, showing Mark everything she saw. A drunk man regurgitated his guts on a street corner, images of lost loved ones seared into his mind like a brand. Two women stared at each other before their lips met tenderly; a start of a new life together. A family of five from Iowa was lost in the concrete jungle of New York and asked a passing pedestrian for directions to their hotel.

A person had just entered the Baxter Building through one of the upper windows.

A female. Young and athletic. Mark would be pleased.

The thief was quiet, careful. She hadn’t tripped the alarms of the state-of-the-art security system the Fantastic Four employed and even now she glided through the hallways of the darkened building, coming ever-closer to reaching her goal. Her mind swam with thoughts that felt smooth, but flowed through her sharp mind like rivers. There was a hunger. An insatiable avariciousness drove the woman to seek something in the building she had broken into.

Jean reached further. Memories, thoughts, and feelings streamed through both her mind and her master’s. Soon, she had names.

“Felicia Hardy. Black Cat,” Jean muttered aloud. “It seems we have a thief on our hands.”

She could feel her master’s concern shift into something more primal; a longing he only felt when he thought about his slaves or imagined his future conquests.

He’d seen an image or two of the female cat burglar who strutted about New York City at night in a skintight black suit. The internet had been abuzz about her when the first images of her in her suit had surfaced nearly a year ago.

Jean felt Mark’s amusement through the link and smiled, knowing full well what was about to happen. “What will you have me do?”

"Well we can't have her stealing anything from our new friends, can we?” Mark said, a teasing smile dancing on his lips. “Take control of her body and have her meet us in the kitchen. I want her to be completely conscious and aware the whole time, but unable to stop herself no matter how hard she tries.”

“Consider it done, Master.”