The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

4.

Tegan swallowed. She knew Joss couldn’t brainwash her into an obedient slave just sitting here, but the other woman’s confidence worried her. Maybe it was an echo of learning Dana was insignificant to her significant other. Maybe she was afraid Joss was really unbalanced.

Maybe it could happen. Maybe Joss could really hypnotize her, against her will, and then she’d be under Joss’ control—

Ridiculous.

“So. Is there something I’m supposed to look at now?” She pointed a finger without moving her hand. “The lovely flickering candle, for instance?”

She grinned at Joss. “Or do you carry a pocketwatch for this? In case you need to put someone into a trance on short notice?”

Joss curled her lips in a way that showed she knew how shapely they were. “It’s not a duel, Tegan. Just being challenged doesn’t give you the choice of method.

“The hypnotist decides how she will put the subject under. All you are to do is relax and cooperate.”

She set a palm on the table. “If you try to hijack this, you’ll forfeit. And before you decide that it doesn’t matter, and you can disrupt the relationship I still have with Dana anyway, just remember: if you and I have a war, she’ll be the battlefield. Whatever you think I do or don’t care about her—you care.”

Tegan had been thinking exactly that, but now she just listened to Joss declare Dana a hostage.

“We have an agreement, Joss. I’m not breaking it. Just tell me what to do.” That last felt more submissive than she wanted to, but it convinced Joss.

“All right, Tegan. I’ll ask you to listen to me, to listen carefully and with attention. I’ll ask you not to speak unless I instruct you to respond. If you have a thought or a question, just put it aside.” She smiled. “If you do succeed in going into a trance, then after you’re comfortable I’ll instruct you to remember all of them, and we can have a little Q&A session.

“If not, then there’s little point in them anyway. So just listen, and speak only when I instruct you to respond.”

Tegan nodded, paying attention to Joss and also to the rest of her senses, trying to stay on her guard. Joss was speaking reasonably, but she might already be trying to lull Tegan into relaxing, following her words. She’d said to be attentive—maybe there would, as the saying went, be a quiz later. If she didn’t keep up with what Joss’ even tones were telling her, Joss might decide she wasn’t cooperating.

She’d just have to make sure she didn’t get lightly conditioned into saying things like “Yes, Joss” without thinking.

“This will be unusual for both of us, I think.” Joss took a sip of her drink. “Have you been hypnotized before, Tegan?”

Joss kept calling her by name. It was patronizing, but it was also a way to keep touching her, like the hand she’d put on Tegan’s leg before.

“That you can remember, anyway?” She grinned, and Tegan gritted her teeth a little. She’d meant to say that herself.

“No, Joss.” That might bear repeating. “I haven’t been hypnotized. No shows, no therapy, no psych projects.”

“A virgin.” Joss burlesqued glee, but on her features it didn’t seem mocking—just real. “Exquisite.

“Well, I don’t have a lot of experience with subjects who actively resist me, either. So I may have to improvise.”

She paused for a moment and just looked across the table.

Tegan was about to ask why and caught herself. She sat still and tried to decide whether to meet Joss’ eyes or not.

Wait. I just silenced myself and now I’m averting my gaze like some . . .

. . . virgin. She looked up, finding the flame reflected on the onyx of Joss’ eyes. Was Joss doing more conditioning? Assessing her stance and attitude?

She swallowed again. What weak points did Joss think she saw? Were there ways she actually could get into Tegan’s head?

“You’re expecting some sort of overt attack, Tegan. That I’ll either just overwhelm you with my dominance”—she grinned—“or else demand your attention on some focus. That’s not the way to cast a spell over a woman who has a mind.

“Not a spell that will truly bind her.” Joss’ voice was huskier, and Tegan didn’t think the note of arousal in it was feigned. Joss liked her. Wanted her body.

Virgin. Not just a hypnotic one, either. Dana’s faithless girlfriend was checking her out again with that stare. Joss might already be counting on celebrating in bed later, somewhere, with a newly-enslaved Tegan as her private dancer.

Dream on, Tegan thought. But she found herself dreaming it, too, like a bad movie she couldn’t look away from. Joss moving sinuously around her, herself a sleepwalker whispering compliance until Joss found other work for her tongue . . .

“Hypnotizing a woman is like making love to her. In some ways it is that, and in other ways making love involves a little subtle hypnosis. There are ways to do it. Some are quicker, some are more fun.”

Joss breathed in. “Some will leave her a willing slave afterward.

“Hypnotizing you, Tegan, is something a man might do with no foreplay. He’d do the minimum to get you to be still and let him into you, and even that might be a demand—look into his eyes, watch the watch and see only the watch.

“Thrusting in and pulling out, leaving you empty and frustrated.” Joss smiled. Her language was transparent, but her voice was huskier now, and the words were stirring ideas in Tegan anyway.

“I will hypnotize you, Tegan, the way I would make love to you. Gently, with awareness.” She gave Tegan a voluptuous smile. “I won’t have to capture your attention, because you’ll want me to have it. You will surrender it.

“And unlike a man, I can keep doing it, not just once but over and over, deeper and deeper, better and better. Your submission to it will be rewarded.”

Tegan listened, and kept still, and found her heart pounding. She may not entrance me, but remembering her voice will be mental phone sex for a while.

Joss sat up a bit straighter and Tegan did likewise. She looked at Joss, but the dark-haired woman just looked back at her across the candle, no longer speaking. She wasn’t studying Tegan now—her expression held nothing of question or curiosity.

Tegan waited. She remembered a man who’d actually tried to hypnotize her in a bar using NLP. His “mesmerizing” cadences and blatant double-entendres got more intense as he mistook her incredulous stare for tranced surrender. He’d looked so hurt when she finally burst out laughing, and it only made her laugh harder.

Joss kept looking at her, and Tegan didn’t feel like laughing.

“You may look into my eyes now, Tegan.”

She twitched, and realized she already was. Suddenly they were all she saw, onyx reflecting flame. She shivered again, staring into them, aware of the delicately-attractive face around them in her peripheral vision. She heard herself breathe and wondered if it was Joss she heard. It felt like Joss was right in front of her, kissing-close, near enough for her thoughts to echo.

No. They still sat across the table from each other. Tegan knew that but didn’t feel it.

Joss’ stare was like nothing Tegan had ever felt before. It was an intimacy she realized she’d never even had with a man she’d slept with. It was strange and it drew her, and, even knowing how heartless Joss was, Tegan wanted to stay like this for a while and just feel it.

She’s got me doing it. I’ll put myself under.

She blinked but didn’t look away.

I can look away. And I will. In a few . . . seconds . . .

“It’s all right, Tegan.”

Joss’ voice was lower, sympathetic. Tegan knew it was just a tool and smiled. She broke the gaze. She looked over toward the doorway to their little private area, and realized she was still blinking. She waited for Joss to scold her for resisting, or to entice her back to look and lose herself again.

But it was Joss’ silence that pulled back her gaze like gravity.

Joss was smiling this time, and there was a glint of cruelty in it. Tegan realized that only excited her—she blushed to know that it made her think of lovebites.

Joss did something different, another subliminal body shift.

Then her gaze was spearing into Tegan’s mind, no longer passive. Tegan could feel it reaching into her, and it was like Joss’ hand on her thigh before—invasive, confident, predatory.

Firm. Strong.

Arousing.

Something in Tegan tried to make her look away again but now she fought the instinct, staring back. She thought she saw Joss’ lips move but shivered to realize that the hypnotist was licking them—the shine was lipgloss and a quick, eager catlike tongue.

A little tastier.

The whisper she heard must be her own quickening breath.

The dark-eyed gaze thrust into her and she tightened against it, but felt it grow stronger.

I need to look away. Now. Soon. I will. Look away.

I have to.

If I don’t . . . she’ll really start to hypnotize me.

I wonder what that would feel . . .

Tegan was looking at Joss’ mouth before she realized she’d broken the spell again. It was pursed eagerly, her tonguetip peeking out, and seeing it like that Tegan couldn’t resist picturing Joss’ other lips.

Maybe Joss was picturing her on her knees, ready to kiss them, with nothing else in her mind.

She forced herself to look back into the brunette’s eyes again. She was tingling. Being turned into that kind of slave was impossible, but the sheer badness of it licked at her in a way she’d never imagined possible.

Tegan braced herself for the invasion again and breathed out.

It didn’t happen. She looked back into calm, lovely dark eyes and felt no pressure. She searched them, listening to Joss breathe—or was it she herself?—and relaxing as the seductive menace faded.

She imagined glaring back down, forcing herself on Joss, bending the lithe hypnotist to her own will. She dreamed it as she stared deeper into Joss’ eyes. Lunging across the table and raping Joss’ mouth with her own and they’d float off, Joss tight and still below her like a trained mount and . . .

Float . . .

Joss’ eyes were deep, deep pools now, and Tegan had let herself fall into them. They’d seduced her into diving and she had, and now she went deeper. She let it happen and half-dreamed the moist flicker of Joss’ lips, the soft whisper that stroked her brain like a tongue behind her knee.

She knew she was letting Joss do something but it felt so nice and she knew she’d wake up if anything really wrong happened.

Tegan heard herself say something and felt her mouth move and it was like a kiss. She smiled and savored the taste and kept looking into Joss’ eyes.

5.

“Stop resisting me, Tegan.”

Tegan swayed. “Wh-what?”

Resisting? Had she been? It was all so . . . so . . .

“It’s all right, Tegan.”

Tegan blinked. Joss had said that before, hadn’t she? Another trick to soothe her. But it did soothe her, and it sounded much richer now. Almost as if Joss were worried about her.

About how susceptible she might be.

“I can see that you find my eyes fascinating, Tegan. Thank you. Please look into them now.

“I don’t know if you’re starting to feel attracted to me. I’d like that. I find you to be a very pretty woman too, Tegan.

“I don’t know if you’re trying to fight the effect of the hypnosis by defying it. That will be all right too.”

Joss smiled. “That seems to confuse you, Tegan.”

Suddenly it did. She blinked. She thought of saying You just said not to resist . . .

But that would be resisting.

She stayed silent, and realized she hadn’t spoken—not since Joss had told her not to. There hadn’t been anything to say. Had there?

Was she already obeying Joss?

“It seems strange, doesn’t it? That I don’t mind? It’s all right, Tegan. As you listen to me and look into my eyes, as my voice becomes all you really want to pay attention to, you know and can be certain that I can’t take control of your mind and will through hypnosis, and that even if I do succeed in hypnotizing you, it won’t make you obey my every command without question.”

Tegan stared into Joss’ eyes and tried, for a moment, to do something, to move. She couldn’t think of anything to do, and she needed to pay attention to what Joss was telling her. Joss was saying she couldn’t take over Tegan’s mind with hypnosis. That didn’t seem to bother Joss, though. She just sounded amused.

But maybe she was just amused that Tegan thought so.

“It’s all right, Tegan. You believe you can’t really be hypnotized against your will, and even if you do lapse into trance, you might be willing to accept a suggestion that your eyelids are heavy, or to believe an instruction that you are too drowsy to think without help, or to obey a command to remember what you are told to.”

Tegan twitched at obey but kept listening. The phrases were so reasonable, and so lightly tempting, but Joss was still conceding that she might not even have any power at all here. Some of it bothered her but she mustn’t speak.

Joss had told her not to. It would forfeit the wager. She needed to win to get Joss away from Dana. If she didn’t—maybe, soon, it would be Dana’s turn to stare into Joss’ eyes and listen. Dana who didn’t know Joss stared at pretty blonde gallery staffers and tranced them into bathroom quickies.

Dana who would surrender to a woman she trusted, and let herself be hypnotized.

Then Dana would obey Joss.

“It’s all right, Tegan. But you do feel certain that if I commanded you to . . . hmm . . . surrender your free will to me forever . . .” Joss savored it, and her pleasure at the thought quivered into Tegan “. . . or even to serve me by influencing Dana . . .”

Joss nodded slowly, not breaking her gaze, seeing how that roused Tegan again. “Yes, exactly. You believe that if I crossed lines like that you’d snap out of it.”

Tegan tried to visualize it: her lidded eyes would open wide, her swaying body would stiffen, and her compliantly closed lips would open.

But the image was blurred. Joss had said snap out of it not like fingers snapping but in a sibilant whisper like the back of a fingernail along skin. She said it the way she’d drop a hypnotic victim all the way under.

I’m her hypnotic victim. No—I’m not.

I’m not. She’s not putting me under.

She forced her eyes wider, and Joss smiled. Tegan had lost track of whether that was a good sign. She tried not to lose herself in how Joss’ lips made the smile curve.

“It’s all right, Tegan. You feel certain that even if I could overcome your will and bend you into a mindless catspaw, you would never let me use you that way against Dana. Think of how that would be.”

Tegan did. She had to.

Dana confiding in her—doubts about Joss, things she’d seen if Joss were careless with the other women she tranced into being her toys. Tegan herself soothing Dana, calming her, giving Dana the plausible lies Dana wanted to hear, in a lullaby voice that helped Dana believe. Later, watching Dana sleep, Tegan lifting the phone with practiced silence to report to Joss.

Her eyes dry and her pussy soaked as she gave up every secret Dana trusted her with. Her eyes blank and her pussy inflamed as she waited blankly, needful for Joss’ voice to alter her mind again and fill it with newer lies.

That would be too horrifying to think about.

“It’s all right, Tegan. I will tell you now what all this means. You understand that since you do not believe I can take control of your mind with hypnosis, you can afford to relax and submit to all of it.

“You can enjoy the peace of suggested sleep, Tegan, and the bliss of floating through actions you perform only on command, without willing them or being responsible for them.

“You can surrender to that, Tegan, and feel the pleasure of it without the slightest worry that you have to give up your freedom to earn it. It’s not a risk for you, Tegan.

“Why not just look into my eyes and enjoy a hypnotic induction?”

She smiled sweetly at Tegan and for a moment Tegan wondered how she could feel anything bad about this kind, pretty woman who was so nice to her and spoke so . . . so . . .

“Or are you realizing that you might want to submit to me after all, Tegan?” Joss lidded her eyes and Tegan was dazzled by her lashes, and then the obsidian gleam as they opened to her again. “It’s so tempting, isn’t it? To know that all you must do is sit, and listen to me. Believe in what I tell you and let your mind and will just go to sleep.

“When we leave here, your thoughts can be mine, and your desires can be about pleasing me.

“We will leave as mistress and slave, and we will go where I will us to.”

When she stopped, Tegan listened to herself breathe. She tried to speak but she hadn’t been told to. She tried to shake her head but it was so heavy, and so hard to think of moving unless she were . . . told to . . .

“Just a dream,” Joss whispered, wistful and promising.

“Because I can’t really hypnotize you into my slave, Tegan. Don’t you believe that? It’s what’s in your mind, and that’s what controls you. What’s in your mind.

“Unless you want me to, Tegan. Unless you let me hypnotize you. Would you like me to make you my slave?”

Tegan knew she must answer, but she could only shake her head. It felt feeble, but Joss accepted it.

“I understand. Well, I may very well lose this wager. I’ll walk away from beautiful Dana, but the world is full of pretty women with careless minds.” Joss looked quite content. “And if I just spend a while now staring at another, very pretty woman and watch her fight to keep her lovely sleepy eyes open, if I speak softly to her and see her tremble like clear water at each, soft syllable . . .”

Her face glowed with pleasure as she gazed at Tegan. “Hypnotizing women is making love to them, Tegan. And if it’s all foreplay I love it still. If we never climax, if you never open yourself to me”—Joss closed her eyes—” your taste is still divine on my tongue.”

When she opened them Tegan fell back into them with just enough time to know that she hadn’t looked away.

6.

“Look into my eyes, Tegan.

“That’s it. You’re doing wonderfully. You’re a perfect subject, alert but compliant.

“Yes. Just look deeply into my eyes. Rest in them, Tegan. Rest your weary thoughts and let me hold them for you, safe in my eyes.

“Yes. It’s all right, Tegan. I prefer this kind of induction. I can do it anywhere, with anyone. It’s direct, it’s . . . intimate . . .”

She stopped, and Tegan drifted into her eyes.

“No pendulum, no flame. Nothing for her to see, to think of, to lose herself in but me.

“I need to be close to her, filling her awareness. The woman I’m hypnotizing. Hearing her breathing soften and slow as she relaxes.”

Joss’ eyes widened a little, almost in awe. Tegan could almost notice.

“And I can see her, Tegan, as I put her in my thrall. I see her pupils narrow as her focus shrinks, and I know her mind behind them is narrowing, forgetting everything but me. I see her face relax as the body below it goes loose, slack, soft . . .

“Watching a woman succumb to the power of my hypnosis is one of the most erotic experiences I know,” Joss whispered reverently.

“As you listen to me relax you, Tegan, and fall deeper into my eyes, and further under my spell, I can see your willpower fading. You look even more beautiful, more desirable as you grow more helpless. Each word you hear and accept and make part of your thoughts weakens you, makes you sleepier, more compliant, more docile.”

Tegan felt sleepy, and it was too tempting to fight. It was like a kinky but skilled massage. Joss was right—there was no risk in relaxing and enjoying this.

“Tegan is so docile, so tame. So willing to be bidden and led. So filled with pleasure to fulfill someone else’s will.”

There was a naughty tang to Joss’ dominatrix patter. Tegan blushed and thought about Joss’ fantasy of taking her, of keeping her kneeling in some dungeon chamber nude and hypnotized. If she were utterly under Joss’ control, willpower lost, unable to think except to obey commands . . .

“You can dream of it with your eyes open, Tegan. All the ways a hypnotized woman surrenders to her hypnotist.

“Sometimes you will obey me because the pleasure it gives you is sweet and addictive. Obedience is a tongue inside your pussy all the time.

“Sometimes you will obey me because you will no longer be able to think of disobeying. I will remove the thought from your mind and you will never remember it. There will be only obedience behind those wide, staring eyes.”

Tegan had thought about sex with women, but it had never happened. Now, her best friend had come out, and there was a lesbian hypnotist lusting after her, dreaming aloud and in very erotic ways about making Tegan her pet, her mindlessly submissive slave.

It was unreal. Tegan found the fantasy intriguing as Joss unfurled it like dark satin and wrapped it around her mind.

“Safe, Tegan. Able to swim through these dreams, but hypnosis is safe. You don’t believe in it, so it has no effect on you.

“Yes. It’s all right, Tegan.”

Tegan sat perfectly still and fell deeper into Joss’ stare. She smiled without looking away, a little rueful at how easy this was to do, at what a waste of time it was for the hypnotist to keep doing this.

Joss was right—she was just going to enjoy some relaxing quiet time, and then she’d wake up and finish this with Joss.

Now Joss was murmuring about how relaxed Tegan’s body was becoming as she sat and listened. She kept saying that it was because Tegan was listening to her. Tegan smiled and stayed aware of how pleasant Joss’ tone was, how clearly she spoke. But as she sat and let it happen it was easy to see the link. Relaxation did pulse through her body in cadence with Joss’ suggestions.

I’m letting her isolate my senses. Tegan felt astute. Her eyes were tired as they held Joss’, but she could still do a self-diagnostic. I’m feeling that her voice is what’s relaxing me because she’s suggested that there’s nothing but her voice and my relaxation and I’ve accepted . . . accepted . . .

“Nothing but my voice, that’s right,” Joss smiled and nodded and went back to her relaxing chant.

Tegan’s shiver was almost sensuous. She’s reading my mind. More relaxation loosened her.

Or she’s starting to write in it.

Tegan relaxed and considered that. It seemed as though it should frighten her, but it was hard to fear a woman who was making her feel so nice, just by speaking.

She tried to focus on what Joss was telling her, but then her will to do that slipped off her like the tension she was starting to forget.

Feeling so nice.

Her arms floated up to hang comfortably at shoulder level. She’d raised them at a suggestion from Joss, and Joss looked very pleased that she’d obeyed, and now Tegan smiled a little foolishly. Her own mind was barely needed for such tasks now, and came late to the party. Was Joss going to tell her there were balloons tied to her wrists and let her arms rise over her head?

Tegan remembered they were in a public place, even if in a private room. She knew that just long enough to think about Joss leaving her arms up, invisibly bound by the suggestion. Joss could give her another suggestion, as quiet and irresistible as the first, and send Tegan helplessly out among the other patrons with her hands floating skyward.

Some might just laugh, some would think she was drunk or joking. Maybe some would guess she was under hypnosis. Maybe one of them would try to see what commands they could make her obey.

Tegan enjoyed another shiver, and then she stopped remembered that there was a place outside this room, or anyone there.

Joss spoke, and Tegan’s arms floated down to the table. She controls me so well, Tegan marveled. Joss used her body more gracefully than she did. It was strange and fun to see her body respond so smoothly, while her mind could just relax and watch.

Joss spoke again and Tegan floated, the room’s air holding her up. She rested her arms on the table and it was a see-through swimming float, bearing the weight of her that the water didn’t.

The sensation passed, but Tegan nodded slowly. It had been so restful.

Rest. She needed to rest. She was so sleepy now, so relaxed, and it made her sleepier to look so deeply into Joss’ eyes. Joss’ voice massaged her, smooth and firm, lulling her to rest.

Tegan sighed. She wanted to. It was pleasantly tingly to think of falling asleep as some kind of surrender to Joss, but Joss herself had said that there was nothing she could make Tegan do if she didn’t really want to.

She floated on Joss’ voice and stayed moored to Joss’ gaze. I wonder . . . what might I really want to do?

With Joss? It was a strange thought but not disturbing. Odd and exciting, like the other woman’s skillful hand on her thigh before. Mmm. Maybe she could pretend to be lost in hypnotic sleep and Joss might feel her up.

But she wouldn’t lose control. She wouldn’t be under Joss’ control, either. Staring into Joss’ eyes, she thought about what Joss would think she saw. Just what she wants to see: a pretty woman she can think she’s hypnotized.

Tegan pictured herself now: primly upright, hands limp on the table on either side of the candle, face as blank and dazed as blonde Sasha’s, after a few moments under Joss’ svengali stare. Eyes glazed and riveted on Joss’.

Maybe Joss didn’t even need to feel her up. Watching a woman succumb to hypnosis is one of the most erotic experiences . . .

Joss slipped her hands around Tegan’s without disturbing them. Joss’ fingers were smooth and warm as they pressed and massaged her hands. Now as she kept falling into Joss’ eyes and heard only her voice, listened only to the sound of her voice, she melted to the skillful pressure on her hands.

Her hands turned as they were tended, palm-up. For a moment they were forsaken. Tegan drowsily wondered how they had sinned, blissfully empty of the will to ask, and then Joss’ fingertips lighted on her palms like butterflies.

Tegan squirmed. The feather-light touch whispered pleasure down to her pussy. Joss traced her nerve endings and the pleasure began blotting out whatever else Tegan tried to think. Her hands were paralyzed, and Joss stroked her palms quietly, expertly.

She realized that she couldn’t move, that she’d lost the will even to beg Joss not to stop.

She realized the pleasure on her palms was better than some of the best sex she’d ever had.

She knew what Joss could do, with that touch, if Joss could touch her where she was wet.

If she touched my clit like that, I’d do anything she wanted. God help me I would. I’d kiss her ass and I’d wear a collar and I’d . . .

. . . let her tell me . . . oh . . . I’d . . . no . . .

Tegan was starting to fight the pleasure but she’d already given herself to it. She couldn’t remember how to wake up from it. She gasped please even as she forgot why.

No. Mustn’t. Dana . . .

“Sleep now, Tegan.”

7.

Tegan gloated across the candle at Joss, who looked unphased but hardly triumphant. Tegan didn’t waste relief on knowing she hadn’t awakened on her knees, or between Joss’.

“That was fun,” she said. “I’ll give you that.” She left her hands on the table, turning them palm-down and leaning on them to stretch, wondering what that did to her body and whether Joss was letting herself watch.

“I hope it was worth it, Joss. Seeing a ‘hypnotized’ woman close her eyes and zone out in a chair.”

Joss cocked an eyebrow. “Worth it? What do you mean?”

Tegan curbed her irritation, and the suspicion that Joss was reneging already. “I mean you lost, Joss. I’m awake and I’m thinking, and I’m not a zombie calling you ‘Mistress’ in a monotone.

“You’re welcome,” she added as she saw Joss lick her lips at the image. Joss grinned and bowed a little.

“So I won.”

“What did you win, Tegan?” Joss looked genuinely at a loss.

“I—” Tegan stopped and stared at her. “I don’t . . . know. No, I do but I can’t—” She leaned back a little.

“You hypnotized me to forget. It’s a posthypnotic suggestion.”

Joss’ eyebrow rose again. “If I did that and it worked, Tegan, then I don’t see that I lost. That would mean I did have you under hypnotic control. Still do.”

Tegan felt herself blush. It made Joss grin some more.

“Not total control. Part of you doesn’t like it. That part seems a little pissed, too.

“But if you are obeying a suggestion, that must be because another part of you likes to obey.”

She shrugged. “Which would matter a bit more, I suppose, if there were a ‘bet’ to settle.”

“No!” Tegan felt her lips pull back in a feral grin. “I know we had a deal. A wager. I wrote it down.” Joss looked startled, and Tegan nearly laughed to see it.

She reached into her purse and found the folded paper by feel. Locking eyes with the erstwhile hypnotist, she slid it out and held it, unfolding it.

She looked down and turned it rightside-up to see the lines in her handwriting.

“What does it say?” asked Joss with keenly-controlled impatience.

Tegan flicked her a glance and grinned again.

“It says ‘Joss hypnotized me into her willing slave.’” Tegan’s vision blurred and she tried not to look but it was true, the words becoming real as they slid into her mind. She was sleepy, but she could stay awake to obey orders.

“’When i read this it will put me instantly into an obedient trance.’” Freedom faded like someone else’s fantasy. She relaxed.

Tegan sat holding the paper for a moment, and then looked up attentively. It had served its purpose. She realized she’d just triggered herself, that she’d obeyed a command to do it and it stung her to know she’d been used.

That she’d helped her user use her.

But it stung her like the strap a very ex- but dream-haunting boyfriend had used on her ass, once. That sting made her damp and loose and hot.

She looked up into her hypnotist’s eyes and waited to hear and obey the next command.

“Look back down at the paper, Tegan.”

“Yes, Joss.” She obeyed.

“Read the rest of it, Tegan.”

“Yes, Joss.

“’i am writing this under hypnosis because Joss told me to, and i always do as i am told.

“’When i am finished i will forget until i am told that i like to obey. i must go back to sleep now.’”

Tegan’s eyelids drooped as she remembered fading deeper. Her eyes followed the line where Joss slipped had the pen from her loosening fingers.

“You—” She willed herself awake and pulled her hands back to her lap—just seeing them on the glass made her think of sitting there, naively open and receptive while Joss turned her into a self-inflicted practical joke.

The wager, the real one, was back in her mind, although she thought about it only gingerly, in case it was another Joss-trap. She tried to ignore the shivery half-wish that it was, and that she’d feel herself slip helplessly under again, willing to believe the next absurdity.

But this wager seemed too pathetic to be something Joss would invent. She’d come here to warn Joss away from her friend, and Joss had been willing to walk. The price had been a screen test for Joss’ lesbian hypnofetish mental movie.

She watched Joss watching her.

She had won, she knew. Joss hadn’t slipped into her mind and wrapped it in chains while she sat here. There was something different about the way the other woman looked to her—let alone at her. But it wasn’t possible to be as intimate as even this little game had been and feel the same way about . . . the same way about . . .

. . . the coldblooded bitch who was cheating on Dana.

Tegan knew she shouldn’t feel relieved she could think that. She hadn’t really been worried that Joss would get to her somehow and subvert her. Maybe it was just relief that the job was done.

She did another self-diagnostic. Not consumed with lust for Joss’ body—check. No deep mysterious need to please Joss—check. Idea of hearing Joss command her lead to instant obedience? No—check.

Joss was someone she didn’t really want to know. And it was worth it if she got Joss away from Dana, too.

“You will keep the agreement, of course,” she said.

“Of course,” said Joss. “Everything true then is true now.”

Tegan caught herself scanning the place, in case that was another trigger phrase and things started to blur.

Oh stop it. You didn’t get programmed. Listen.

“Dana’s cute and wonderful to be around, but so are a lot of other women. Who don’t have paranoid best friends.” She smiled crookedly in tribute, but Tegan wouldn’t be drawn out, and just nodded. “And while you’re congratulating yourself on resisting my eee-ville spell, Tegan—it happens. We started out with the premise that you neither like me nor trust me, so my rapport with you isn’t going to be what it is with a girl who does wanna have fun.

“Not to be snide.” Joss smiled snidely. “But in case you think I may seek vengeance for my humiliating defeat at your hands—”

“I shouldn’t lose any sleep over it?”

Joss pointed, and she pointed back.

“Now: we both have our reasons for not wanting Dana to be hurt, or even curious, when I break up with her. Unless you were planning on telling her your version of—?” Tegan shook her head.

“Fine. So no mysterious fades, no picking a fight. I may relocate for a while, or get flaky.”

They nodded together: they both knew Dana couldn’t stand flaky. Tegan looked at her dark-haired adversary for a moment.

I really did win. She’s getting into it like this to save face. She has to control something, even if it’s her own retreat.

“It’ll take more than a couple of days, and I presume you’d prefer I keep my actual time with her to a minimum.”

“Whatever works, Joss. If it starts taking forever, or I hear anything weird from Dana—or stop hearing from her altogether—then things will change. Otherwise, I’ll just stay in touch.”

“Will you? Tease.” It was hard to tell whether Joss was back to equilibrium or just faking it. Her covetous look at Tegan’s legs as Tegan stood to leave the table looked sincere.

8.

Tegan ended up staying away from Dana, too. For a while, she told herself. She nursed Dana through some initial anxiety at some sudden but subtle distance with Joss, feeling only mildly guilty as her friend wondered if it was her own fault.

But they didn’t spend as much time together as usual, and one day Tegan noticed that she’d called Joss to leave a friendly reminder—and get a cool hint that it was being worked, thanks—but hadn’t been in touch with Dana.

She looked at the phone and thought about Joss’ voice on the line. Odd to hear it now, normal, even slightly peeved, after having experienced it when Joss was in full hypnotist mode.

Tegan looked away, wondering why she was letting it stay with her that way. She hadn’t been hypnotized that day, not really, but she’d gone through the motions. She hadn’t been Joss’ fascinated prey but she’d sat there like someone Joss had caught.

She kept recalling the way Joss had spoken to her—she’d actually said how sexy Tegan looked, staring and still, and even when she wasn’t describing it she was obviously enjoying herself.

Tegan looked away from her own body for a moment, when she realized that in a way Joss had used her to masturbate that day. She doubted Joss had actually touched herself while she put Tegan through the induction, but Joss had acted out the mindfuck that she would have done, for real, had Tegan been receptive.

Rather than dwell on her use as a sex toy, Tegan tried to consider the sort of woman who’d want that. Maybe someone like Sasha, at the gallery.

She couldn’t make herself feel revulsion. Joss’ lust was almost—no, it was infectious. The other woman hummed with a dark energy that gave power to her eerie whims. Tegan told herself she was wasn’t becoming physically attracted to the other woman.

Which was important, since for now the other woman was Dana’s. If Dana somehow learned Tegan was engineering her breakup with Joss, and then even thought that Tegan was seeing Joss herself . . .

Tegan shook her head. I’m doing it for you, kiddo. I won’t let you get hurt that way either.

Especially since I have no intention of doing the nasty with her.

But if it wasn’t sex that drew her to Joss, was it knowing Joss would control her if Tegan let her?

She fled that by thinking of women who would, after or during a trance they’d let Joss put them into. Maybe Joss and Sasha knew each other, and Sasha liked being swept into obedience as much as Joss liked accosting her at work.

She wondered what would have happened if Joss had tried something, there in the private room while Tegan sat with her eyes closed. Joss might have believed she had hypnotized her after all, and decided to play with her.

Tegan knew she would have let it happen, for a while. But she didn’t know where she would have made it stop.

If she’d been the kind of woman who’d really let Joss control her, so that she’d never want it to stop . . .

God—sometimes she caught herself on the verge of wistfulness. Not, she told herself, that she’d wanted to be the one to break and bend and surrender to Joss. Let alone leave Dana unwarned and defenseless against the casual predator.

But lately she couldn’t stop wondering what it would have felt like if Joss had taken over.

There was that moment when her own written message had dropped her back into trance, and she’d known she was slipping, but her helplessness, as she’d succumbed to it, had been almost luxurious. She’d felt herself being defeated but she’d almost . . . enjoyed it.

She thought of seeing a hypnotherapist just to experience it again, to see how it felt, if it would be as—

Shit. As arousing.

Which was one of many reasons she didn’t go. How would she explain what she was looking for? How well would it work if she weren’t even honest with the therapist—who’d figure it out and tell her to come clean or leave?

And what if it worked too well? She could be so relaxed she’d spill the whole story at a gentle prod. Or start masturbating on the Freud-couch as she narrated . . .

When Tegan realized she couldn’t even decide if a male or a female therapist would be less embarrassing to do that with, she gave up.

Then there was the sign downtown for an adult hypnosis show, and for a brief crazy moment Tegan imagined going there and being deeply, degradingly changed.

That was when she faced the fact that while the reality of Joss was daunting, the what-if had dug deep roots in her id.

Joss hadn’t hypnotized her that deeply, couldn’t have. But what if she’d been weaker, or Joss stronger, or this the fantasy world where hypnosis could control the unwary mind?

Once she was foolish enough to look and listen, Joss would spin her web round Tegan’s thoughts and drain them. After one sitting she’d be converted into Joss’ newest toy, drifting out of that back room as her armcandy, or trailing her at a submissive three paces like a good concubine.

Impossible, unless she let Joss do that to her.

Tegan thought, Unless.

She imagined sitting at the table, calm and happy, proud of resisting. The waitress would appear to bring the tab—and Joss would look up at her and say obsequious contralto or something, and as trigger phrase put the light out in her eyes, the young woman would snap to attention. In a dull monotone she’d report that she’d carried out her instructions and was ready for new programming.

Joss would smile and put some new thoughts in her head. And when Tegan looked back up in drowsy horror from the drink Joss’ hypnotized pawn had brought her, Joss would be smiling, and the drugs would already have started to paralyze Tegan’s will to resist.

Then she’d be told to look into Joss’ eyes and hear only her voice, and this time . . .

Yikes, Tegan thought.

Though there was something creepily fun about starring as the ingenue in this kind of over-the-top melodrama. Insidious hypnotic drugs and unwittingly mind-controlled serving girls—really. Still . . .

Without thinking about it, Tegan had recast this for fantasy purposes with men she fancied or had created in her mind. She thought of being in their power, an utterly compliant harem slave or a feisty girlfriend they could tranquilize with a word into a purring pet. It worked.

But it worked better when Tegan’s dream-master was Joss.

It was almost a relief when she found that thinking about other women could arouse her—it made her fixation on the hypnotist a little less worrisome. She imagined slipping into the ladies’ room after Joss strolled back out. She’d have found Sasha, still half-hypnotized after Joss had used her and left her there, defenseless and prettily disheveled. Sasha would still be soft and tentative and trusting, still aroused perhaps. Unable to resist it if Tegan chose to ravish her there.

If she had, she’d have tasted Joss on the girl . . .

The fantasies grew detailed. The memory of leaving the restaurant, serenely confident she’d resisted Joss’ spell and remained her own woman, segued into imagining herself drawn to a lingerie shop. Obeying Joss’ posthypnotic suggestion, she’d be unable to think of any other errand until she was inside. Helplessly compelled to flirt with a pretty clerk and coax her into the changing room, to model her chosen wisp of lace and lycra.

As she stared into the other girl’s lovely, glassy eyes with the shadow of Joss’ will within them, she’d stop her dance and kneel. Tegan fantasized that Joss had reduced her to this girl’s reward. Lapping eagerly at the other slave’s cleft, Tegan would delight in not knowing what the girl had done to earn her tongue’s service. It would make her more of an object to serve that way.

OK. It’s an odd way to find out, but maybe I’m bi after all.

When Tegan finally stopped resisting and masturbated to those images, they weren’t set in a lingerie shop anymore. Her dream took her to Dark Forest, the fetish shrine at the further mall, and the things Tegan dreamed of trying and begging for scared her, a little, when sanity returned after the last orgasm.

She thought, furiously. All right. She wasn’t some closet masochist who wanted to be someone else’s slave. She wasn’t falling in love, or something darker, with Dana’s hopefully-soon-to-be-ex.

There was something about Joss. If it was affecting Tegan this way, even with her head start of disliking the woman, she could imagine how susceptible Dana must have been to the brunette’s charisma.

Joss was a serpent: scary, but she couldn’t look away. For some reason Tegan remembered a poster from years back—a dewy young actress entwined with a huge snake, looking calmly thrilled.

She smiled at herself, only half-amused. I should stop thinking about her. Thinking about Joss means dreaming about Joss, and that means picturing myself in Joss’ hypnotic thrall.

And that’s like taking the gun out of the drawer over and over and putting it in my mouth again just because it makes my heart race and my . . .

But Joss was an unloaded gun. Neither she nor anyone else could hypnotize anyone to obey against her will. Dana would have been in danger, but more of letting herself be taken too far before her mind said Hell no than of losing her will and becoming a puppet to Joss.

Tegan was in no danger of that.

She wasn’t afraid of snakes, but she’d never wrap one around her next to her skin.