The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

It was Yule night, but Michael didn’t feel like that was what he was waiting for. In fact, he wasn’t sure exactly what he was waiting for.

He didn’t actually have anything to do here in Lynn’s apartment; Sophie had been delivered safely from the nefarious clutches of the vet, and was purring happily as she once again enjoyed the comforts of home. (Which amounted to dry catfood, a catnip toy that looked like it had seen better days, and a scratching post that she had obviously utterly ignored in favor of half-shredding one of the easy chairs. It didn’t take much, when you were a cat.) He had on a cooking show with the sound turned most of the way down, but he wasn’t really following it. He just had it on to have something to watch while he sat there on the couch, waiting for...for whatever he was waiting for.

He flipped the channel to ESPN, but all they had on was highlights of the day’s games. It was too late to watch “Sunday Night Football”, too early to go home and go to bed, and he didn’t want to wake Lynn. Not after the day she’d had. Poor Lynn. Michael thanked his lucky stars he’d never had a migraine; just listening to her talk when she was in the middle of one of those things made him wince. He could only imagine what she must have felt like when she called.

Michael reached over idly and scratched Sophie behind the ears. He should probably leave Lynn a note before he left, whenever he finally decided to pry himself off the couch and head home. Just something to say that everything went okay, that he was happy to help out, and that he hoped she felt better soon. Especially that middle part—she sounded so apologetic when she called (apologetic and in great pain, to be precise), as though she was forcing him to go through some sort of terrible ordeal. Michael chuckled, watching Sophie stretch in a way that made it clear she hadn’t been declawed. Getting her to the vet, now, that might qualify.

He looked over briefly at the computer, the Playstation, and the bookshelves that usually seemed so tempting, and finally shrugged. Without Lynn, none of it seemed interesting. Whatever he was waiting for, it seemed pretty clear that it wasn’t going to happen. Might as well go home, where he at least had all his favorite sites bookmarked.

Then he heard the slight creaking noise of feet descending the stairs from the bedroom, and a drowsy voice saying, “Hello?” And Michael figured out exactly what he’d been waiting for all this time.

She woke up in the utter darkness of the bedroom with her eyes still closed. The agony of a few hours before was blessedly absent, thanks to the migraine medicine and sleep. Just as an experiment, she opened her eyes. There was light coming from under the door, and she could hear the soft sound of the television from downstairs. The pain failed to return as she looked at the light, a welcome and promising sign. She sat up cautiously and gingerly. Motion, too, failed to activate her nerves’ jangling. Suddenly she froze. Light and TV? Who else was in the house?

I must still be on drugs not to realize someone was here, she told herself ruefully. And that’s got to be Michael. No one else has a key and would have the TV on. Then she allowed a smile to curve her lips. Maybe others would want to, but he’s the only one who would stay with me. He’s more of a protective type than he realizes.

She slid from the bed, grabbed her robe and wrapped it around her naked body, and opened the door. Sophie did not run to greet her, but Lynn knew that was because the cat was insisting on being petted. Lynn had been surprised and pleased when her feline companion had taken instantly to Michael. Now, she called out softly to alert him to her presence.

“Hey there,” Michael said, letting the relief show through in his voice. “I didn’t wake you, did I?”

Lynn shook her head gingerly. “No, not at all. I’ve just been out of it most of the afternoon, didn’t really expect to sleep all night too.” She adjusted her robe once she got to the bottom of the steps. “I just hope I haven’t fucked up my sleep schedule. Nothing like a migraine one day and sleep-dep the next to start the week off right.”

Michael reached out a hand, giving her own a gentle squeeze as she passed him. “Feeling better now?” he asked.

She nodded wearily. “A lot. It’s almost gone now.” She sat down in front of the computer. Other women watched romantic movies or ate chocolates, but Michael knew that Lynn wasn’t truly comfortable until she had a few chat windows open. “You weren’t sticking around just to make sure I was all right, were you?”

Michael grinned and shrugged. “A little. Sorta. I just...didn’t want to leave quite yet, you know?”

She turned and smiled at him for a moment. “I know.” Inwardly, Michael melted just a little. He wasn’t actually sure if she would; he hadn’t realized himself just how much he missed seeing her today until she walked down those stairs and he finally got the chance to set eyes on her. Not that he hadn’t known they were starting to get pretty serious about each other; trading apartment keys brought that one home. But “serious” was too simple a word to convey the ache in his heart when he’d thought he might have to leave Lynn’s apartment without seeing anything but silence and shadows. He felt like an addict who only realized just how bad he needed a fix when he almost didn’t get one.

Lynn turned back to the computer, rattling off a few responses to one friend or another—probably explaining where she’d been all night, he realized. Migraines didn’t leave you in a mood to stare at a monitor. “Thanks for rescuing Sophie, by the way. I’m sure they’d have understood, but I didn’t want her spending another night at the vet’s if I could help it. So what are your plans for the rest of the night?”

Michael shrugged. “Dunno, really. I’ve already eaten, I’m not tired...does lounging around count as a plan?”

Lynn didn’t say anything for a moment, but he caught sight of her reflection in the computer monitor, and she had a smile on her face that might officially qualify as ‘wicked’. It could, in fact, be upgraded to ‘devilish’ with only a minimum of effort. “It could...down, Michael.”

Michael sagged gratefully into the couch cushions as his eyes slipped shut.

Lynn watched as he took the deep breaths she’d taught him—conditioned him—to take, deepening himself without her saying a word. After a moment, when she knew he’d be craving her voice again, she spoke. “That’s right, sweetie. Down, and down, and down.”

There was almost a whimper of relief in his voice as he echoed “Down... and down... and down...” She wondered for a moment if he knew how much he’d come to enjoy these moments of sliding into hypnosis for her, if he consciously understood the levels his unconscious mind loved to experience letting go. They hadn’t discussed it much yet, either with him in normal state or trance. She resolved that they’d discuss that—later.

“That’s right, Michael. Everything going soft, melty, warm, and you drift peacefully for me. Just keep drifting while you hear me type. And as I type, you know that I’m typing ‘deeper and deeper’ on a screen in your mind. And you know what happens then.”

“I go...deeper,” he whispered, his voice sounding as though he’d just uttered a profound truth. It probably seemed like one to him; things just seemed to make more sense in trance.

“That’s right, sweetie,” she said again, watching him sag into the couch cushions. She wasn’t above helping him along with that feeling, either. Of course, she wasn’t going to do anything too wicked to him—the first rule of hypnosis was, of course, ‘Do No Harm’. “It happens so naturally, so easily. You just sink...deeper.” But the second rule of hypnosis was ‘Muahahahahahahaha!’ (Or it should be. One of Lynn’s great tragedies was that she’d never truly mastered the maniacal laugh.)

Lynn turned back to the computer and gave out a few virtual hugs, keeping half an eye on Michael while she did so. Every sentence she typed resulted in a slight widening of his dreamy smile, a soft sigh, another fraction of an inch that he sagged into the cushions. She wondered if Michael knew how cute he looked in trance. She wondered if Michael knew how cute he looked, period.

In the hypnotherapists’ chat room, someone asked if she was feeling better. “I’m much better, yeah, thanks to M. He’s all drowsy-looking over here. ;) Every sentence I type is taking him deeper, so it’s OK that I’m typing.” Aloud, she said, “That’s right, sweetie. Deeper and deeper. Hearing the keystrokes, watching the words appear, and really, you don’t know where the sentences I type begin or end, so the words just keep scrolling the screen until all you see are the words ‘deeper and deeper.’” Then she glanced over at him and couldn’t help but grin at what she saw.

This felt...wonderful. Every time Lynn dropped him, it always surprised him just how amazingly good it felt to go under. It wasn’t like she made him forget or anything—it was just the difference between remembering what a warm bath felt like and actually climbing into a hot tub. His muscles felt limp and languid, his head felt utterly free of tension, and he just wanted to feel like this forever.

He heard Lynn typing ‘deeper and deeper’ again, and part of him wondered if the person she was talking to was going to think that was a little weird, but thinking about it felt too much like effort. Too much like work. It was easier just to rest, to let his thoughts drift past in a disorganized haze and not worry about things. His mind would think of what it wanted to think of. It didn’t really matter. Whatever he thought of would send him deeper.

He was obscurely proud of how good he’d proven to be as a hypnotic subject; Lynn had told him more than once that he was a natural, and assured him that this really was a compliment. Apparently, not everyone took it as one; some people thought it meant they were weak-willed, but Lynn always said it just meant they were smart and imaginative. It didn’t mean they were pliable, or...

Pliant. The word stuck in Michael’s mind, and he let himself follow it. A couple of weeks ago, he and Lynn had been fooling around on the couch, and she’d found a really nice place to touch just above his waist. And she’d noticed, too...he remembered the way her smile changed as she began to caress that same spot again and again. He remembered the way he sort of...melted under her fingers, the way he stared at her and felt his whole body unwind beneath that touch all the way up to the tip of his head.

And she’d noticed that, too.

“Oooh... yes, you like that. It does good things to you.” The touch of her fingers was just on the good side of ticklish. “It makes you feel soft, doesn’t it? No, not there... that’s hard. But the rest of you. Soft. Including your mind. It makes your mind feel soft, doesn’t it?”

He’d nodded his head, his eyes locking onto her smile. It did make his mind feel soft... with a mental start, he realized that he was sliding into hypnosis. When had that happened? But now that he was feeling it, he wanted it to keep going. It just meshed with her caress so very well.

It made sense to him now...and he sort of knew that “now” was actually “then”, but the memory felt so much more real and solid in trance that he felt like “then” was “now”, too. Lynn told him hypnosis was all about focus, and he was so focused on what she was doing with her fingers that he couldn’t think of anything else. He repeated her words almost without thinking about it, and the only reason it was an ‘almost’ was that he thought about how nice it felt not to think about it.

“Soft like clay,” she whispered in his ear, “malleable and pliant, like my words are just sinking into your soft mind like fingers working clay,” and her hands roamed while she whispered and her breath tickled and his cock stiffened and pulsed and throbbed. She wrapped her fingers around it for just a moment, and did that fluttery thing that drove him wild every time.

He felt lost in the memory. Her fingers felt like they were still there, right on his cock, stroking it to fullness. His body still felt relaxed everywhere else, but his hips jerked just a little as he remembered how good it felt. Something about the words, the sensation, it all just felt...better. Better than the hypnosis Lynn had been using to help him relax after tense shifts at the airport, better than the sex they’d been having for a couple of months now, just...better. Michael wanted to feel better. He wanted to tell Lynn about the way he felt, all of a sudden. But his body felt so heavy, and he could hear her typing ‘deeper and deeper’ again, so he just sank deeper into the happy memory and squirmed gently on the couch.

Then the typing stopped.

“Gotta go,” Lynn rattled off quickly. “Something just came up.” She knew it was the oldest joke in the book, but she couldn’t help it. It was the first thing that came to mind when she looked over and saw Michael’s cock straining against the crotch of his jeans. His dreamy smile had softened even further into the warmth of arousal, and she could see the tiny movements that suggested both that his hips were bucking upwards involuntarily with lust...and that he was deep enough that he couldn’t really make himself move very much. Which meant that Lynn both felt sorry for his inability to do anything about his arousal...and that she felt her own need stirring at what was, to be honest, a pretty fucking hot sight.

It wasn’t that she was hiding her kink, or anything, she thought as she slipped out of her chair and crept across the room. She wasn’t ashamed of the way that seeing a hypnotized, blank, mindless guy got her hot. She just wanted to ease Michael into it, that was all. She just wanted to make sure he was comfortable with the idea, and that he had nothing but good, sexy experiences to help convince him that this was something he wanted to do. Judging by the way his hands twitched slightly as if wanting to rub himself, she’d done a good job.

“Michael?” she said quietly, sitting down next to him. “How do you feel right now?”

“Soft,” he replied in a quiet, husky sigh. “Like...clay...”

Lynn almost whimpered as the heat in her pussy suddenly spiked. Oh, she’d definitely guessed right about this sweet boy. He wasn’t just turned on by the hypnosis, no sir. She’d dropped just a few tiny hints a while back, and where did his mind go straight back to? She shivered, even though the room felt very warm all of a sudden. The moment felt alive with possibilities, like she was charged with electricity and all she needed to do was touch him to set off sparks.

She wanted to take his soft sighs and turn them into full-blown moans. As she tilted her head, considering, the holiday lights slowly blinking around the window caught her gaze. She smiled, almost getting to that muahahah.

“All right, sweetie. Deep breath and feel that clay becoming more malleable. I’m starting to play with the shape of your mind. It’s getting even softer. And with the touch of my hands, it’s getting warmer. In fact, it’s getting so warm your body is beginning to feel it. You do feel it now, don’t you?”

Judging by the way his pants outlined his cock, Michael took the ‘warmer’ suggestion a lot more readily than the ‘softer’ one, but he nonetheless moaned out, “Feel it, yes...” His hips rolled slowly but constantly, back and forth as his breathing sped up. His hands twitched in her direction, but she could tell that he’d already convinced himself they were too heavy to move.

Those jeans had to be uncomfortable by now. It was an act of mercy to get them off him, really. “And now you’re perfect, warm and your body as hard as your mind is soft. And that feels so good. Everything feels so good. Remember that, Michael. Everything feels so good.”

“Everything...” Michael whimpered the words out, and the soft, vacant tones in his voice left Lynn uncertain of whether he was really thinking about them or just repeating them. “Everything feels so good...” She also wasn’t certain which would be better.

“That’s right. Everything feels so good. Including saying those words. Including your body doing what I tell it to do. Like sitting up right now, still so deeply hypnotized. Do that for me, Michael, and realize that it’s true, everything feels so good.”

Michael moved slowly, like he was underwater. His eyes never opened, but she could see them moving under his closed eyelids. And the entire time, she could hear him softly reciting, “Everything feels so good...everything feels so good...” She could feel the heat coming off of his body as he straightened up, but even though his hands continued to twitch in anticipation, he was still too passive to move. That was a very good sign; she hadn’t even told him to behave that way.

“And now you know everything feels so good, and I want you to know that it makes me happy that everything feels so good. And you like to make me happy, don’t you?” She allowed herself to caress his cheek, trying to keep her hand steady.

Michael nuzzled his cheek against her fingers, rubbing his skin back and forth against hers with an ecstatic expression on his face. “Happy, mmmmm...yes,” he responded slowly, as though he was having trouble remembering what she’d just said. He arched his neck back like a kitten being petted.

She shuddered despite herself. His body wasn’t the only one warming, and she could feel the wetness spreading down to her thighs. “And since you love to make me happy, you won’t mind giving yourself to me as a present tonight. After all, presents make me happy, and everything feels so good.”

She felt him swaying as she spoke, and when she got to, “You won’t mind giving yourself to me,” he visibly spasmed in delight and let out a long, slow, whimpering sigh. By the time she’d finished, he practically babbled out, “Give myself, yes, everything feels...yes...” Lynn bit her lip slightly, just to try to keep herself focused a little. He was everything she knew he’d be, she thought. All those little ways he’d been giving himself away to her without letting himself know, they were all coming out into the open now. He wanted this. She wanted this. And she wanted him to want this. But something wasn’t quite right...

After a second she realized what she wanted to do. Still caressing his cheek, she closed her eyes and dropped into hypnosis herself. As experienced as she was with the process, it took only moment. She felt herself ready to accept a suggestion from her own conscious mind. This was something Lynn had built into herself during her training, and she’d found it useful on many occasions since then.

Very good, she told herself. Now you feel his pleasure and his heat. It’s good to fall into rapport with him. It’s good to feel sexier as you make him moan. You don’t even need to touch yourself to enjoy this. Your whole body is sensitive, and you like it.

She blinked again, coming out of trance. She felt the suggestion take, her clit starting to throb more intensely. “And now you’re all wrapped up, caught in those clothes. But I want to unwrap my present. I want to see what I’m getting for Yule.” She tugged slightly at the neckline of his shirt. “So now I’m going to unwrap my present.” Heart pounding, she slid her fingers down his arm, resting them on his open palm. “This is my hand, part of my present. And in a moment it’s going to rise and drift over and touch the other. Then they’ll both be my hands. And then my hands will unwrap my present.” She tapped his palm. “Now.”

Everything felt so good to Michael. Lynn had explained a little bit about hypnosis to him, about what made some suggestions stick and others fall away, and she said that the most important thing that made a suggestion take root was that it had to be something that the subject wanted. It had to fulfill a need, deep down, and if it did that, it would take whether the conscious mind wanted it or not.

Everything felt so good. The words echoed again and again in his mind, filled needs he knew about and needs he didn’t, and he thought that his conscious mind wanted it too, but he’d have to find out later because all his conscious thoughts were just drowned out by pleasure because everything felt so good.

Everything felt so good as Lynn’s hands moved with agonizing slowness to pull his shirt up over his chest. They’d taken each other’s clothes off before, but something felt different this time. Better. Something about the hypnosis, about the way she was leading him along so gently, but with such wonderful certainty...it made everything feel better. It made everything feel so good.

His shirt tangled momentarily with his glasses, but then Lynn was there, pulling them gently off of his face and setting them aside. The act caused a wave of pleasant drowsiness to wash through his body; Michael’s eyesight was bad enough that he rarely took them off except to sleep. Some part of him made that connection, and even though his eyes were shut, the loss of most of his eyesight made him feel deliciously vulnerable...and the understanding that he was vulnerable to Lynn made him feel deliciously safe. She finished tugging his shirt over his head and set it aside.

The whole time she was whispering to him, encouraging him. Words flowed around him, entangled conscious thought, pulled it away. He was warm. He was safe. He was loved. The wrappings were falling away, and she was happy. A part of him remembered and worried for her briefly—something about if she was better enough to do this. He heard himself asking about it, and more words flowed. The concern melted away. His thoughts melted away.

Her hands slowly began to unbutton his pants, and then he felt her hands press on his hands, and for a moment he tried to untangle the strange spatial relationships between the two...but that just felt too much like work, and his thoughts just flowed away from him like sand into the bottom of an hourglass. “Good boy,” she whispered as she slowly stroked his hands, as she slowly unzipped his fly. “Good boy.” The words coaxed him, enticed him, warmed and comforted him. He felt like he could trust her with anything—his mind, his body, anything at all. He was giving himself to her. And he knew that made her happy.

Everything felt so good. The cooler air on his skin, the drowsiness, the way she wiggled his jeans out from under him and slid them down his legs. His skin felt alive. Michael was a good boy. Michael was her present. Shedding the wrappings was supposed to happen. That’s what presents did. Then his cock was freed, and he dimly realized he’d been leaking as the air hit damp skin.

Now that he noticed it, he felt a tiny, slick trail dribbling down the shaft of his cock with every little surge of pleasure...and there were so many surges of pleasure. Everything felt so good, he heard himself say it again and again and he couldn’t help but agree with himself. Everything felt so very, very good. He felt Lynn wriggle out of her robe and press her body next to his once again, this time with nothing between them. She took his hands and pressed them to his chest, and it just seemed right somehow to find his nipples and rub his fingers against them.

Then her hand touched his cock and he couldn’t help it—he moaned. Her fingers worked their way from the base all the way up to the tip of the cock, massaging the slick precum into his flesh as they went, and he couldn’t stop his sighs from turning into aching groans of arousal. Lynn wrapped her hand around him and gave his cock a brief, fluttering squeeze, and his hips pushed upwards without any conscious input from his blank, empty mind.

“Everything feels so good,” she whispered again, half-moaning herself. He tried to repeat it but the words came out as incoherent whimpers of pleasure. She understood what he meant, though. He knew from the way she leaned in and kissed him passionately as she stroked him, from the way her nipples had gathered into tight buds where they brushed against his skin. The moans were all part of his gift to her. Her words drifted into his ear, telling him exactly that. “The moans are all part of your gift to me...and they’re just exactly what I wanted.”

Hearing that made him moan all the louder into her mouth. It muffled the sound, but at the same time the vibrations of his explosive sighs of bliss thrummed against their flesh and made him even hotter. Her hand slid up and down now in a slow, unceasing rhythm that hypnotized him even deeper with its smooth, endless motion. It was like a metronome ticking, but one that he felt instead of heard.

“So, so g-good,” he whimpered as she took her mouth away from his to whisper in his ear again. He heard the stammer in his own voice where he tried to catch his breath as the relentless waves of pleasure caught him off-guard over and over and over again. With every trip upwards over the tip of his cock, she worked a fresh dribble of fluid onto the shaft—not enough to make the surface slick against her hand, but even the roughness of the sensation made it feel better. Everything felt so good. So good...

Then it did feel slick, so slick and warm and wet and soft around his cock that his eyes flew open in surprise despite the depth of his trance. Everything was hazy and unfocused, but he saw Lynn’s head bobbing up and down against his crotch. Once, twice, three times, each time causing him to freeze with pleasure as all his muscles tensed at once from the sheer bliss of it all, then she pulled her lips away from his cock and returned to stroking. He caught a tiny glimpse of his own cock, harder than he’d ever seen it as Lynn’s hand pumped up and down along it, before his eyes fluttered back shut again and he was lost in the sweet, blissful trance once more.

Suddenly her voice was right in his ear. Clear, calm despite her own rapid breathing, and somehow peaceful, but the single word was clearly a command. “Freeze.”

His muscles locked in place before most of him had even understood the word. A strangled moan escaped again as his brain caught up to the inescapable fact that he couldn’t so much as twitch. But he was her present, and freezing in place would make her happy. “Good boy. I’ll be right back. And you stay locked in place... But you still feel my mouth on you, still feel the heat building.Everything feels so good.”

A desperate whimper bubbled up as he quivered in need, but he remained otherwise still. Except for his cock, which twitched and swayed with a mind all its own.

Lynn raced upstairs as fast as she could possibly go, her feet almost slipping out from under her as she ran for the bedroom. All she could see in her mind’s eye was Michael, held perfectly still in the grip of her command and so fucking hard and ready for her that she almost forgot about everything else.

But “almost” didn’t stop her from racing to her bedside table and rummaging around in the drawer for a condom. She found one almost by touch, aware that the lamp was about two inches away but unwilling to waste time turning it on, not now, not when Michael was like that and she was like this. She grabbed the rubber and raced back down the stairs. The last remnants of her headache were long ago burned away in a tide of adrenalin and arousal.

Michael was just as she left him, his hands frozen on his nipples, holding them pinched tightly. If anything, he was harder than he had been before. “Good boy,” she said, trying to get her breathing back under control. Or at least, back under as much control as it had been, which wasn’t much. “Good, good boy.” She reached down and fondled his balls, wishing she had more time to devote to them. Michael had very nice balls. But she really wanted just one thing right now, and it was getting too hard to deny herself any longer. She felt his need, and it echoed even more in her. She tore open the packet with her teeth and pulled the condom out.

She forced herself to unroll the condom slowly, sensuously down his cock, stroking the exposed latex over and over with her other hand as she did so. “This feels so good,” she whispered, “this feels so hot, you always want this...” She wanted every part of the experience to be perfect for him, including this.

And then finally, her fingers encircled the base of his shaft. Finally, she could stop guiding and give her own desires free rein. She swung her leg over to straddle his lap, her pussy slick with anticipation. Well, maybe just a little more guiding, she thought as she eased herself down onto his aching cock.

She slid him into her pussy effortlessly, so wet that his cock rubbed against her flesh like silk against silk. Her body was almost feverishly hot against his, especially where her crotch pressed up against his groin for a long, aching moment before she rose up again. “Oh, oh god,” she whimpered, “oh, you’re right on my clit...”

This couldn’t last; she knew he was too turned on to last long and she damn well knew that she wasn’t going to last long either. It was too hot, too good, and all she wanted was to come, all she wanted was to make him come, all she ever wanted was right here, right now and she rode him as hard and as fast as she could. Her pussy clenched around him, again and again as she felt her thoughts dissolve into the whirling bliss of orgasm and she moaned out, “Come for me, Michael, come for me come for me come come come oh oh oh!”

And then she couldn’t speak at all anymore, only feel, and it felt so good as he shivered and shook and thrust and held and she knew he was coming, coming inside her, coming for her, and it was nothing but perfection and bliss for a long, timeless moment as they held each other close.

She finally took a deep breath and shifted state again, dropping into trance. The word “release” seemed to echo in her mind and the imagined connection she had suggested to herself faded. She blinked her eyes open and gazed at him, still straddling him and feeling him slowly relaxing inside her. “I need to move before you go totally soft, sweetie. Wake for me.”

Michael opened his eyes again. It took an effort.

He’d wondered at times during the trance, as much as he could, about whether he’d remember any of this when he woke up. Would Lynn make him forget somehow? Would he just remember it as a hazy dream? But no, now that he was awake the whole thing felt gloriously real in his mind, almost tangible in its joy. He shifted position slightly, allowing Lynn to slide off of him and curl up next to him. “I love you,” he said. He’d said it before, but it somehow felt like it meant something different after this.

She cupped his cheek with one hand, snuggling closer. “And I love you.” Her voice was quiet and certain. “I think...” She hesitated just a breath before she went on. “I think we need to have some long talks. Good ones. About hypnosis and how we feel about it, and how ok it is. Because that was amazing. Because I love you. Because you know what they say about things you do on Solstice night.”

“Um...no, I don’t.” Michael grinned, and wriggled a little closer to her. “Lapsed Catholic, remember?” He kissed her playfully. “Enlighten me—what do they say about things you do on Solstice night?”

She giggled softly and kissed him before answering. “They say you’ll be doing them all year long. And I intend to make that saying true.” As he whimpered happily in her arms, she gave a blissful sigh and held him close.