Creeps
Chapter Two
The patience of Martin Manning was a fortress besieged by many enemies. Hunger. Lust. Distrust of his allies. Fear of his prey. His awareness of the limits of his time, and of his ingenuity. The fact that the walls of this fortress had been constructed of soft cheese to begin with. Yet patience was the ground upon which he must make his stand. His was to bide his time, and make no mistakes.
That same time last year, Stacey Reeves was a name he barely knew, some sorority girl of minor infamy for the sheer excess of her beauty. With patience, he had wrought and realized a fantasy so fantastical few if any would believe it had ever happened. With time, with as few mistakes as possible, the woman had been bent to his will, stripped of her clothes, and beguiled by his cock. In the beginning, it had felt as impossible as her request had been insane. Bit by bit, he had found the gaps in her defenses and brought her down.
Martin had done it once. He could do it again. The knowledge and the experience were there. All that was left was to fix his eyes on his prize and refrain from blinking. Or starving. Or hearing his conscience too loudly. Or getting caught jizzing in her hair, which was apparently a thing that could happen.
Would that there were a way to fast forward through these dreadful, sexless, anxiety-inducing early encounters. But there was not, and so Martin Manning manned the walls of his fortress.
“Hey, Professor Manning.” Kira grimaced and laughed self-consciously. “Or Martin, I guess…? It’s still weird to think about calling my professors by first name. Doctors, too. Dr. Rivers never offered to go by first name. Elaaayne,” she pronounced awkwardly. “I can’t imagine.”
Martin smiled through his terror. It stemmed from many sources. One of them was that she’d arrived late. It had given him six minutes in which to panic over whether she’d somehow found him out, if Stacey had suffered a change of heart and confessed, or been careless talking about the plan. Laughable, almost; if there was one ironclad aspect of their plan, it was his co-conspirator’s obligation to secrecy.
“Well if Mr. Manning is more comfortable for you, that’s fine. I can go either way.”
“That’s what she said.” Her giggle cut short with a groan. “I can’t believe I just made a that’s-what-she-said joke with my professor slash therapist. Who’s a man. Ugh. I’m so sorry. I’ll take it seriously, I promise.”
“It’s fine, Kira, really. The university issued me a sense of humor during my orientation, so I can relate to the kids. Ha ha. Ha.” He tried to smile. Was he shaking? He had to be. She was so damn hot. And if this panned out, he was going to fuck her. This meeting had all the anxiety of a first date and a bank heist rolled into one. It had potential to be even better than that wild, mind-fucked sex with Stacey. Every time he closed his eyes, he could picture the sisters on their knees, naked, panting with lust for him. Kira pushing Stacey out of the way so she could have a turn with his cock in her mouth, and that look of profound relief when she got that mouthful. And more than anything, the knowledge that he had put them in that frame of mind, taken two college girls and actually mind-controlled them to make them want to fuck him.
“You know, you’re probably my favorite professor, so far,” Kira said, then qualified. “Most of them are way old and… I dunno. Maybe I just don’t know them yet, but I know you more because of you and her.” Her nose wrinkled. Martin didn’t miss her sidestepping Stacey’s name. Hopefully years of sibling rivalry hadn’t built up too much of a barrier. Whatever it was, it was hard to imagine her reservations to fucking him being more profound than Stacey’s lesbianism.
“I’ll do my best to keep ahead of the competition. So did you find the place OK?”
“We got a little turned around for a minute there. Google maps just kept telling us to make a U-turn, then we did, and then it told us to make another U-turn, and… anyway, better later than never, right? Sorry I’m late. I’m normally super on time, honest. We won’t let it happen again.”
That “we,” Martin suspected, was the most generous contributor to his growing ulcer. He had expected her to show up alone. Stacey hadn’t said whether Kira had a car or if she was taking public transportation or walking or what. A sign in the waiting room invited her to come on in when she arrived. Crafting it had filled almost thirty seconds of his anxiety-inducing wait. Then she’d showed up, and while Martin hadn’t seen the rest of “we,” the blown kiss and male voice had painted an adequate picture.
Her boyfriend had brought her. And now this guy was sitting, unsupervised, in the waiting room. Not fifty feet away on the other side of a pane of glass, while he was in here preparing to sew the seeds that would make this young woman his—and her sister’s—personal slut.
“So… what happens first?” she prompted after he forgave the tardiness. “Do I need to fill out some forms or something? I’m on my parents’ insurance—I made sure to bring the card.”
Unlike the emergence of a boyfriend, this was one factor he’d prepared for. He presented his lie about being in the process of learning the billing software, and assured her, jokingly, that if she stiffed him he’d just take it out of her grade. It got the indulgent laugh he’d hoped for. Good. Martin planned to keep up this charade for a while, reasoning that if their time together cost her nothing, it was one less obstacle to her attendance. If she or her parents grew suspicious, he’d have Stacey on hand to persuade them that everything was perfectly normal. By the time anyone might really get worked up over it, he hoped to have both sisters happy to lie for him.
Or… or maybe he could charge her, a little? His stomach rumbled.
He explained his fiction, which she nodded at seriously, obviously never having needed to handle medical billing before. Neither had he, for that matter. “So for today, I’d just like to start with a little oral history, give you a chance to ask me any questions you might have, start thinking about goals for our time together, and if we have any time left over, to start talking about what you’re used to from your old therapist.”
“Sounds great! Do I stay sitting up, lie down…?”
“Completely up to you.”
“I guess… there.” She folded her legs under her, sitting criss-cross on the sofa, right on the cushion her sister preferred, upon which her naked pussy had dribbled liberally. (The cushions had been flipped over the summer, of course. He wasn’t a barbarian.) “So. Oral history. That’s what…” She winced. “Anyway, what do you need to know?”
“Well, it’s pretty simple. I’m not a psychiatrist, so I don’t prescribe meds, do referrals, hospital admissions, none of that. So we don’t need to go through allergies and current meds and all that. All I need to know is… you. So tell me about yourself.”
Her lips twisted. “Um, like, what do you want to know? I don’t even…”
“There’s no right or wrong answers, Kira. Anything you think I ought to know, or feel like sharing about yourself. If you want to get into bigger stuff like why you’re here today, that’s fine, too, but you don’t have to.”
The low-pressure salesmanship seemed to work, and she let out a slow breath. “OK. So my name is Kira Reeves. I’m a freshman, and… Geez, I’m acting like this is speech class or something. Anyway, I just started at Lakeview, I live in Penderdast Hall, but I’m planning on rushing this winter. Dorm life is… I dunno. It’s not horrible. I’m just not used to it. Sharing bathrooms and waiting to get a sink in the morning… Anyway. I’m undeclared, I’m a Libra, I was on the swim team and jazz band in high school but nothing like that here, I’m allergic to shellfish—or wait, you said no allergies. So never mind. And I love dogs, especially my baby Raider—you wanna see him?”
“Sure,” Martin said, scribbling notes furiously. It was hard to imagine any of that being useful, though even harder trying to imagine this busty girl competing on the swim team with those twin anchors dangling from her chest. Easy to imagine her trying to compete though. He’d seen her in swimsuits online. The girl liked those likes, and knew how to get them.
Raider turned out to be some kind of mutt that resembled a German shepherd more than anything. “He’s adorable.”
“I miss him so much. I seriously cried almost the whole ride here, thinking about him. Like, saying goodbye to friends is hard, but at least they know, you know? And you can text them, snap them, whatever. But Raider’s left sitting there wishing I’d come home and… Ugh. It sucks. Do you have a dog?”
“My mom’s allergic unfortunately, so I never had one.”
“Well you don’t live with her now, do you? You should get one.” She rolled her eyes at herself. “Or maybe you don’t need me telling you what to do. Sorry.”
“It’s fine.” He was impressed with himself for saying so, rather than what he’d almost said, which was What kind should I get? Do you think the pet store is open? Let’s go! The suggestive power of a beautiful face and killer knockers was right up there with his hypnosis, if not beyond it. Telling himself to hold it together, he went on. “That’s a great introduction, Kira. Thank you for that. So next up, what questions do you have for me? If any.”
She nodded, then pulled her phone out of her back pocket. When Kira had first entered his office, she’d done a brief twirl to take it all in. It had given him a glimpse of that flat rectangle wedged the left side of those rounded ovoids. Lucky fucking phone. It seemed she was pulling up a prepared list of some sort, and looked up as she read the first question.
“How long have you been doing this?”
“Therapy, you mean?”
“Hypnosis.”
“A long while now. Over ten years.”
“Really?” She made a perturbed face. “How old are you? You don’t look that old.”
“I started young. A passing curiosity at first, saw it in a movie and started reading up on how much of it was b.s., and soon I’d read enough that I wanted to see how much of that was b.s., too. I had some friends who let me practice on them sometimes, and after a while, I guess I got pretty decent at it.” Decent enough to turn a lesbian selectively straight, which was pretty damn decent in his book.
“Huh. So… it’s like a skill? I guess in my head it always felt like whether it works or not is on the patient, not the doc.”
“Oh, it’s absolutely a skill. Can’t just say ‘abracadabra’ and reach right into the subconscious like magic.”
“Huh. Interesting. My old doc always said… It doesn’t matter. OK, next.” She glanced back at her notes on her phone as Martin pondered what she’d been told. It was hard to imagine a hypnotherapist so ethical that they wouldn’t attempt to take advantage of this girl, though he had no reason to think this Dr. Rivers had been running any scams. “So… what can you tell me about what you did with Stacey?”
“Nothing.” He allowed the silence to linger to emphasize his sincerity. “Not a word. I can’t tell anybody about anything you say or do in this office.”
“I mean… There has to be something. Like, what if I did something… illegal?”
“The police don’t pay me a damn thing, Kira. I’m here for you. For my patients.”
“What if I, I dunno, said I was going to, like, murder somebody?” She splayed her hands innocently. “Hypothetically.”
“If you told me that, and I believed you, then I could only notify the person you threatened. I still wouldn’t notify the police.” He allowed a thin smile. “Though they might.”
“OK, so murder’s still on the table, cool.” She grinned impishly. “All right, what’s next. Oh! Yeah—do you record your sessions?”
This was a topic he’d only recently begun to consider. All last year, Stacey had done all the recording, even if it turned out she’d only done it to copy his induction. She’d not shown him anything, but described the technique in enough detail for him to puzzle it out. Pretty simple sound editing, really. Take the induction from their sessions, then splice it together with her own hypnotic suggestions. The end result was that, unbeknownst to him, she’d been modifying his efforts from day one.
Every time he’d added to her mantras, she’d updated her autohypnosis recording with fresh post-hypnotic suggestions. Ergo, she trusted Martin Manning, but not about her plan. She would consider his suggestions, unless they involved Kira or impacted her precious dignity. His touch turned her on, but she would never let him fuck her until he agreed to manipulate her sister. It was a testament to her shrewd mind that she hadn’t fucked everything up with her meddling, but Stacey insisted she’d always been careful not to disrupt his core efforts. Really, it was a good thing, too. If he’d found out earlier in the process that he’d be asked to make Stacey’s little sister fuck her against her will, he might have walked away from the whole thing.
Kira was watching him from an answer, tits bouncing in her casually low-cut top as she adjusted herself on the cushion. Far too late to do the right thing now.
“I will be, yes. Today, I’m getting by with notes, but in future sessions, yes, I’ll be recording. I managed last year without it, but I only had the one patient. Now, if the business grows, like I hope, I’ll need to make sure I have records on everybody so I’m not relying on memory alone.”
“Oh. I guess that makes sense. Dr. Rivers—my old doctor—recorded everything, too. I got used to it, but it took a bit. It’s sort of like having someone watch you sleep, you know…?” She frowned.
Martin only really wanted to record it to keep more careful track of things, to be able to go over their sessions and review what worked, what didn’t, her reactions, and so on. He’d had no intention of trying to do any actual psychoanalysis even before Stacey approached him with her prohibition against it.
“Well for what it’s worth, I only intend to do audio recordings, so when I review our sessions, nobody’s going to be ‘watching’ anything.”
Kira considered, then slowly nodded. The distinction seemed to relax her somewhat. “OK. Cool. Um, so… do you do…” Suddenly she shook her head. “You know, never mind.”
“No, go ahead, Kira. Ask me anything.”
“No, it’s nothing. If it ever matters, I’ll ask then.”
Martin frowned. “You’re sure?”
“Yeah, no biggie.”
“All right then. If you’re sure. Any more questions?”
“OK. Just remember if you ever think of any more, you can always ask. Transparency is important to me.” God, the fucking lie of it.
Kira replaced her phone in her pocket. “Gotcha. So… now what?”
Martin folded his hands in his lap, channeling all the mildness he could. “So… I said we’d talk about goals. Did you have goals with your old therapist?”
“Sort of? I know we talked about it once. I don’t think it really came up any time recently, though.”
“All right, so I’ll take that as some familiarity. Now, I don’t need hard answers today, but what I do want is for you to think about what you want to get out of our time together.”
Goals were something he’d heard therapists on TV talk about. Martin had never been to a therapist, never thought he’d had any use for one. Still, more than one TV shrink had blathered on about goals, and it sounded like the sort of motivational crap that could keep a person going. Besides, the more he’d thought about it, her goals could potentially be weaponized against her. He didn’t know yet whether it would play better to instill a sense in her that they were making progress and so she needed to keep coming to him for assistance, or if he could swing having her leave his office feeling like she was failing and only he could drag her across the finish line. In either case, though, goals could be a carrot, and he meant to dangle the hell out of them.
“Some avenues to thinking about them could include questions like: What brought you in here? Is there anything that bothers you that you’d like to stop? Anything you’d like to improve upon in yourself, or habits you’d like to kick? Relationships you want to improve? Anything student-related that—”
Four months is a long time to adjust one’s moral compass to the idea of doing something evil. It made for a rather copious space for rationalizing (by the time he was done with her, she’d thank him for getting her to agree to it), acclimating (he’d already done it to Stacey, and it was a lifelong fantasy besides), telling oneself that it had already gone too far to turn back (his rent wasn’t going to pay for itself), and otherwise twisting oneself into the sort of person who made someone fuck them and fuck their own sister (as he was presently in the midst of beginning to do). This was happening. Martin believed he had made his peace with his iniquity.
And then she interrupted him with what may well have been the only thing that could put a crack in his resolve.
“Stacey,” she said firmly. “I want things to be good between me and Stacey again.”
In spite of everything, his jaw dropped. He picked it up again soon enough, but there was no missing it. “Oh. Well… that’s a great goal, I think.”
She nodded. “I’ll think about other stuff, too. But I know I want that. But you can’t tell her, right? You said.”
“Of course not.” And he meant it. What could he tell her—that at the first opportunity to open up to him, confide in him, her first thought had been wanting a better relationship with her sister? The same sister who saw her as a warm body to fuck at her discretion? “You have my word.”
Kira offered a thin, sad smile. Her eyes were far away. “Right. Good. So, yeah. I’ll think about other stuff, too. God knows I’m a frigging mess—I dunno about meeting all the goals I need, but setting them should be no prob.”
“Great.”
Kira broke out in grins. “So that’s it? Don’t go easy on me now, Professor Manning.”
“Next question: how aggressive do you want to be about it?”
“Aggressive? How do you mean?”
“How often do you want to meet? You’re lucky in that right now, I’m still starting up, building my clientele, so I have room to give my patients ample attention. But how hard you want to push yourself is up to you.”
“Then let’s be aggressive! Yeah?” For the first time, Martin was grateful to have Kira in his class. Sure enough, he had read her exactly right. The girl was driven. Frame it as an opportunity to impress herself and others with her hard work, and she was in.
Biweekly. Up from bimonthly under her Dr. Rivers. If he could stomach making himself do this, it was in the bag. She was going to have some kind of relationship with Stacey by the time he was done with her, all right.
“So how’d it go?” Stacey asked him that evening. He was still in his office. There was no A/C in his attic apartment. Like most of the summer, he was sleeping downstairs and making heavy use of Febreeze to make sure his scent didn’t stick to the couch and put off his sole patient.
“So far, so good.” He summarized the basics (except that excruciatingly sweet bit about her hopes to rekindle their friendship), trying not to remember how assiduously he had promised his confidentiality.
“Nice. That’s a really good pace. I didn’t think you’d get her more than monthly at first, honestly. Not without some kind of BOGO deal or something, anyway.”
“Nah. I can’t help it. Reeveses love me.”
She shook her head. “We find you useful, I’ll grant.”
“Oh, and before I forget, one thing I didn’t love was that her boyfriend gave her a ride out here.”
Stacey frowned. “Boyfriend?”
“Yeah. I didn’t get a look at him, but I know he waited in the lobby for her the whole time. I gotta say, it makes me uneasy, the idea of going to work on her while she’s got her guy in the next room. I did a little testing on how soundproof this place is this afternoon. It’s good, but it’s not perfect. Having his girlfriend hypnotized could be the kind of thing a guy could get nosy about.”
“Yeah, no shit.”
“Do you think you could offer to give her a ride? Maybe she’d—”
But Stacey’s head was already shaking a firm negative. “That’s a non-starter. She didn’t even come with me to Lakeview. Rode here with some girl she half-knows from high school instead. We’re… not close. These days.”
Martin had observed that very thing already. Hesitantly, he ventured, “Maybe you could start getting close again? She hasn’t opened up yet, but my sense is that she wants a better relationship with her big sis. If I were trying to read between the lines.” The lines on which I miss being tight with Stacey were written.
“I doubt it,” she groused. “Anyway, it’s a no-go. We’ve barely talked since she came here, and it’d be really suspicious if I spontaneously offered to ferry her to her hypnotist. This whole thing will fall apart in a hot minute if she digs in her heels and thinks I’m trying to push her into something.”
“That bad, huh.”
“Things between Kira and I fell apart right about the moment she found out I’m a lesbian. They haven’t been good since.”
“Kira and me.”
“Kira and you, what?”
“You said ‘between Kira and I.’ It’s between Kira and me. Compound object of the preposition.”
“I’m going to compound fracture your jaw if you don’t focus up.”
“Oh.” He grimaced. “All right. Maybe Friendy McBoyfriend was a one-time thing. Do you know the guy?”
“Last I knew she was single, but no surprise. Guys like Kira, and Kira likes guys. Guyz, emphasis on zz.” Stacey offered a thin smile. “Not sure you’re her type, though, so don’t get any ideas about more conventional ways into those panties.”
“Like I’d rather fuck her the old-fashioned way? Pff.” Let alone that he was reticent to fuck her, even once she was willing, while she was his student. If the university found out, he’d lose his primary income, and back alley hypnotist didn’t sound like much of a resume-builder. “But say, speaking of love lives, how are things on the home front with you and Sherri?”
Her indulgent smile incinerated in a flash. “None of your business.”
“That bad, huh.”
And then she was on her feet. “I don’t remember inviting you into my private affairs, Mesmer.”
“Hey, I’m not trying to pry, OK? But now I’m involved in this shit, and you managed to let this Sherri chick in on some things she shouldn’t know about. And you were together for a while, it sounded like, so excuse me for wondering if she might know even more than that.”
“And you’re only asking now? Get a grip. If you think I let Sherri in on our plan, you can chill. Thanks to that fat blonde cunt, Sherri thinks I tried to get you to make me straight. Since we live under the same roof, I did what I could to smooth things over. We talked a bit after we came back, once, and my sense of things was that she made the same assumption you made, self-hating lesbian trying to hypnotize herself to be right with Jesus. Whatever she thinks, she definitely doesn’t suspect anything to do with Kira.” She folded her arms beneath her breasts, affording Martin his first glimpse of her augmented cleavage in months. “Satisfied? Any other shitty situations you want me to relive?”
“I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m sorry, OK? I know we’re not friends in the normal sense, but hopefully I’m allowed to care about how you’re feeling a little bit.” Her face didn’t soften. Or if it did, it didn’t soften long. When Stacey Reeves wanted to glower, she glowered like a champ. “Anyway, glad to hear our operation isn’t in jeopardy.”
“Focus on that. And… yeah. Sounds like you’re doing well. Don’t let resting bitch face make you think I’m not vibing your efforts.”
“It’s going to be great. Trust me.”
“You know I do.”
Martin did not know that, and now that she had said it, he was not sure he believed it. But she had once, and he hoped she would again.
Kira, as it so happened, had not been exaggerating about her capacity to identify goals. Martin looked over the list she had provided, transcribed verbatim onto his notepad.
Improve my relationship with Stacey. That had been there already when she arrived. They’d not had time in this, their second session, to get more into what that meant to Kira. Sad to think a reservoir of homophobia could be lurking beneath such a sweet surface. Sadder still that it might make a barrier to his work on her.
Make the dean’s list. An academic goal, and not very surprising. She’d opened with that today, and it made for his introduction to the theme of the day’s discussion. See, Stacey had finished high school in the top ten in her class of almost eight hundred. Kira, merely the top ten percent. Her parents had not let her forget the distinction.
Lose fifteen pounds. This had been an interesting point of discussion, at least. Martin had failed in his efforts at professionalism here, sputtering indignantly at the notion she had any reason to worry. Kira had raised her shirt to show off a tummy that only the most critical eye could call rounded, then pinched at it to show off her undercooked muffin top.
When he again tried to reassure her, she shook her head and told him he simply didn’t understand. During a visit to DAT house two years back, her sister’s sophomore year, she’d overheard one of the seniors tell Stacey that if Kira wanted to make it in as a legacy, she better get serious about her BMI if she wanted to beat the caliper test. Then Kira had explained what the hell all that meant. In any event, though she now insisted she had no intention of pledging DAT house this winter, the damage had been done.
Call my parents more. A simplistic goal, and well below the threshold for which a typical therapist might recommend hypnosis, but only a few weeks away from home and already Kira was being hit with guilt trips over how they’d been getting weekly updates from Stacey, but only got the occasional text or email from their baby daughter.
Get along better with my roommate. Apparently things in the dorm front had been off to a rocky start, though at least there was no Stacey in it this time.
Commit to my goals. Meta, to be sure, though it had been her idea, and as Martin tried not to choke on the enormous gob of undeserved fortune, she explained her feelings that she hadn’t really tried that hard on the goals she’d set with Dr. Rivers. (That she hardly remembered what they had been seemed to underscore this fact.) Stacey had come home last semester seeming so much more focused, serious, mature, and she could only assume that her work with Professor Manning had a lot to do with it.
“Do for me what you did for her,” she pleaded.
“I’ll… do my best.”
She then apologized that there hadn’t been more goals, then asked if it was too many, and how many did Stacey have by the way? This was followed by another apology for attempting to pry into another patient’s affairs.
Kira took a breath, composing herself. “So… we still have like twenty minutes left. These sessions are an hour long, right?”
“Not to the minute or anything, but that’s the minimum I make sure I set aside, yes.”
“So… now what? Is there time to put me under, do you think? Is that the next thing?”
How he wished it was. But twenty minutes wasn’t much time, especially for their first induction. Likewise, there was still the prick in the lobby putting an itch between his shoulders. Martin had gotten a look at him this time. A generically good-looking guy, though his mouth seemed permanently stuck open. Martin had disliked him already or he would have begun to do so on the spot.
Anyway, he had anticipated not having time, and had come prepared. “We may build to that. Usually that’s something we build to, although since you said you have prior experience, we may get there sooner rather than later. For now, though, I wanted to work on some more pragmatic solutions.”
“Great!” She clapped her hands together giddily. “What do I do? Teach me, teacher.”
Martin crossed his legs, like therapists in movies were always doing. He regretted it immediately, thighs just thick enough to be putting uncomfortable pressure on his balls. “I can’t help but notice that your relationship with your sister weighs pretty heavily on you.”
“Oh. Um, yeah. It does.”
“And we’re going to get into that. And that may well be something we address under hypnosis. But for now, we’ll start with something a little simpler and more direct.”
“Groovy.”
“What I’d like you to do is get in touch with your sister sometime between now and our next session. You two have appointments practically back to back. See if you can handle being together for a car ride to my office, and back to campus again.”
Kira was wilting before his eyes. “I don’t know, Professor Manning…”
“Just try, all right? Maybe she’ll say no. Maybe you’ll lose your nerve halfway through the call and back out of it. Or maybe not. Maybe you’ll be the bigger person, extend this tiny little olive branch, and we’ll see what comes of it.”
“But… she…”
“Does Stacey know you two aren’t in the best place right now?”
“Oh yeah. Big-time. This summer…” She shook her head. “Longest family trip of my life.”
“Well that’s good. You can tell her I put you up to it, and if you don’t want to talk to her, you don’t have to. This simple interaction might help give us both some insights into where we’re starting off at with your goal.” He tapped his notepad.
She took a deep breath, and for a moment, he thought her apprehension might win out. “I’ll try,” she said at last.
“And hey, at least your friend out there can take a day off, right?”
Kira’s soft brown eyes darted to the door. “Actually… I’m breaking up with him tonight. Is that bad?”
There was no way she could appreciate the reason for his smile, but she returned it anyway. “It’s college, Kira. Guys come and go.”
“Here’s hoping.” She giggled. “Anyway, thanks, Professor Manning. I guess if I’m gonna try this bravery thing, maybe I ought to get on with this, huh.” Kira inclined her head toward the waiting room, then dragged a finger across her throat and let her tongue fall out.
“Good luck, Kira. Try not to break his heart too hard.”
She shrugged. “Eh.” Then, with a demure handshake and a wish for a good weekend, she was gone.
The sight of the Reeves sisters standing side by side, in the flesh, in his office, perhaps the very spot where he would someday fuck them, was almost worth what followed. The pictures didn’t do them justice. It was very nearly dizzying, his eyes being torn every which way in search of where it was most pleasing to look. Stacey’s coldly beautiful face. No, Kira’s warm, inviting one. No, her tits. Those big, bouncy boobs. Or maybe Stacey’s? Impossibly perky, perfectly spherical. Or that thin strip of tummy between Kira’s shirt and shorts? No, for sure Stacey’s legs. Maybe a bit higher, though, actually. Lord, how he missed that pussy of hers. What would Kira’s look like? Was that a camel toe he was detecting, or… yes, it had to be. But the faces, they were so…
“Dropping off your patient,” Stacey said, holding the door open for her sister. Kira twisted conspicuously as she swept in, trying too hard to avoid so much as brushing against her sister. “I’m gonna run a couple errands, but I should be back by the time you’re done. For my… session.”
Martin returned her smile, only the moment he did, hers warped into the most livid scowl he could remember seeing on her since the year before when he’d dared to mention Kira. Then came the finger across the throat, apparently some kind of Reeves trademark for their approach to men who had displeased them. Stacey looked a lot more like she meant it, though. As Kira took her place on the couch, Stacey re-entered her field of vision, and the fake smile was back. She let the door slide closed, paused to glare raw hatred at Martin from behind the glass, and left.
Evidently, his lie that she was still his patient had not been a big hit. That wasn’t for another hour yet, so for now, he focused on the Reeves before him.
There Kira was. He’d seen her that morning in class, despite his best efforts to pay her less than the usual amount of attention. The girl stood out. He’d noticed that she’d changed clothes since then, ditching a pair of torn-up jeans and a t-shirt with the Lakeview mascot for her present ensemble, a thin, tight sweater in muted rainbow stripes to unnecessarily emphasize her bust, with a pair of shorts so incongruous that it could only be fashionable. Short shorts were in, to his delight—it was dangerously distracting to drive through campus any more. (Or it had been, before he’d sold his car to pay for his security deposit.) Kira’s thighs were covered barely more than they would be in her underwear.
Forcing his attention on her eyes, he opened, “So, I see you did it. Good for you!”
Kira nodded softly. “Yeah. It… I dunno. It wasn’t that hard, I guess. We…” She swallowed down something that looked rather dense. “I said some things to her this summer. So… Yeah, I figured I’d have to really beg her, but she agreed pretty easy, so that was cool. We didn’t talk on the way over or anything, though. It was really awkward. But cool that she agreed.”
“Cool indeed.” The space he allowed for elaboration went unfilled, so he went on. “So. Today’s the day we really get started, and the work begins. Are you ready?”
A more vigorous nod this time. “So ready.”
“All right. Now I’m going to leave this up to you how we begin. Last time, you seemed to be expecting to jump right into hypnosis as a solution. Is that what you prefer, or would you rather talk? No need to break out the ‘big guns,’ so to speak.”
Sweetheart that she was, his finger quotes netted a chuckle. “No, we don’t have to. I just figured you would. I mean, that’s your thing, right?”
Martin started. “My thing…?” Did thing mean kink? What had she heard? What had Stacey told her?!
“Oh! I hope you don’t mind, but I sort of… googled you.” She winced. “La Mesmer! That’s such a cute name.”
Whew. One of these days, he would internalize that Stacey was on his side in this. “Ah, that. Yeah, it was a… phase.”
“Was it bad? I, um… Maybe this is weird to say, and you can completely tell me to shut the heck up, but it looked sort of… sexual…?”
“Sometimes, a little,” he conceded, glad he’d drilled himself on this conversation so many times. “Why, what’d you see?”
“You at some coffee shop or something. Nothing R-rated or anything, obviously, but you were standing in front of this cute girl, and it looked like she was undoing a button or two, so…”
Martin did his best to laugh it off, the three chuckles from his rehearsals. He knew exactly what she’d turned up. When they’d been dating, Naomi had made a fake social media profile for “Holly,” her persona she used as his anonymous volunteer, and used it to spearhead some advertising. She sexted him once in a while from the account, too. It had actually been pretty hot. I can’t stop hearing your voice in my head, la Mesmer, telling me to take off my clothes, making me want to hear you tell me to do more…Anyways, now Naomi was the only one with the password to the account, and it remained one of the top search results.
Martin’s cheeks colored a bit, a genuine reaction, if not to what the girl assumed. The whole la Mesmer routine felt so pathetic now that Stacey had shown him what was possible. “Yeah, that was my old, um, assistant. And… girlfriend. Sorry, not to be all TMI. But just so you understand she was ‘in on it,’ so to speak. A little PR work for the hypnotism industry. All behind me now, I assure you.” He took a sip from his water bottle to wash down the taste of bullshit.
“And here I was worried I was gonna wake up with my top off!”
Martin’s inadvertent spit take only barely missed his patient. She shrieked in dismay, except it was dismay at having offended him, not the grotesque spray. “Oh gosh, I was kidding! I didn’t really think… Please don’t be mad. I was just teasing you—you were blushing, and I thought it’d be funny and why do I ever think I know how to be funny, and… are you OK?”
Martin hammered a fist into his chest, trying to purge the droplet that had sneaked down his windpipe. It took a moment, a moment in which Kira soothingly patted his back, her breasts resting firmly on his shoulder. “I’m so sorry,” he wheezed at last.
“No! That was so my fault. Everybody always says I flirt without meaning to, and now I’m freaking out my therapist—and professor! Good grief. Please don’t read anything into it—just a dumb joke.”
Martin nodded, head swimming a little. Some of it was the near drowning, but some of it was the meta nature of the interaction. Kira comforting him that of course she would never find herself topless in his office, when he had a script at the ready to assuage that very fear on her part.
“If it’s OK with you, I’m going to try to scrape together what’s left of my dignity and pretend that never happened.”
“Same,” she agreed hastily, returning to the couch.
Martin refilled his water bottle from the sink at the side of the room, and retook his seat. It was long enough of a break that most of the awkwardness had faded. “So, I think we left off discussing what your preferences were regarding hypnosis?”
“Yeah. Um… is it weird if I want to dive right in just so I don’t put my foot in my mouth again?”
With a relieved nod, he assented. “That sounds great. So, Kira, I’m practiced in a variety of techniques. I’m not sure what you’re used to, but usually I do a guided vocal induction. If you’d like, I have implements that might assist. A metronome, blindfold, more white noise tracks than you can imagine… just name it, and I can do it.”
“Dr. Rivers used wave noises. Do you have something like that? That always relaxes me. Sometimes when I’m at the beach, I swear, I almost fall into a trance without even needing her to be there doing her thing.”
His cock made a break for it, assaulting his zipper with deadly force. Hyperbole, yes, but the mere suggestion that she could be put into a trance so easily… God. Martin shifted his notebook into his lap for concealment. “I think we can manage that. If you’d be more comfortable, feel free to lie down, and we’ll begin.”
Eight minutes, forty-eight seconds. That was how long it took to put her into a trance. It had taken over months with Stacey, and even then she snapped out of it the first time he coughed. Not fifteen minutes into their third session, and Kira was lying down on his couch, eyes closed, breath slow, jaw hanging slightly open. The sound of waves crashing and receding issued from the speakers on his tablet.
“Kira, can you hear me?”
“Mm.”
He smiled. So like her sister in that moment. “How do you feel?”
“Mm. Relaxed. Free. Helps.”
“How does it help?”
“Been stressed. Tense. But when I’m in a trance…” She sighed, as soft as he was hard. In the slow arc of his eventual sexual conquest of this young woman, this moment was the normal sex equivalent of the first button coming undone. “Mmm. Melts away.”
“You enjoy this, huh?” he asked, as transfixed in his own way as she was.
“Mm. Yeah. Comfy.”
“Does it give you… pleasure?”
Before he could slap a hand over his mouth in horror at his overreach, Kira was already nodding indolently. “Mm. Feels good. Wish we hadn’t waited.”
He threw his hands in the air, equally in triumph at how easy this portion of their journey looked to be, as well as latent exasperation that his sister had taken half the school year to reach the same point. If Stacey had enjoyed being hypnotized as much as her sister, he might have fucked her before Naomi ever even started in on him and dodged that whole bullet.
“Kira, is it all right if I ask you to do some things?”
“Mm. Sure.”
“Things like—” Huh? She’d just… agreed to it? Where was the fidget? Where was the cagey demand to know what kinds of things? Where was the Stacey in this girl?! With his justification turning out to be unnecessary, Martin started over. “I want you to say some things. Things that you’ve already admitted are true. Understand?”
She nodded. “Mm. Say things. Yes.”
“And it’s OK to say them, because they’re true. Then, after you say the words, I want you to think about how true they are. Understand?”
“Um… I’m not sure? I’m sorry.” She frowned, folding her arms under her breasts as if to hold in heat, like her confusion gave her chills.
It was as well she didn’t, as his studies had given him to understand that an illustration of such a technique was productive. Martin provided one. “Kira, say, ‘two plus two equals four.’”
“Two plus two equals four.” A dopey smile crept back towards pink lips.
“That’s absolutely true, isn’t it.”
Kira nodded slowly. “Mm. Yes.”
“You’re sure?” He barely waited for the nod to continue before pressing, “Why?”
With a wrist that looked strained by the weight of her hand, Kira counted it off. “Two, and then another two. Makes four. See? One, two, three four.”
“That’s right. Now I want you to hold onto that feeling, that sense of ‘of course this is true, obviously, duh!’ Think about this feeling. Memorize it. Do you have it?”
Kira’s eyes, closed, closed harder in concentration. “I think so.”
Martin ran her through a few more exercises, and each time, he went slightly more abstract. There were sixty seconds in a minute. Her name is Kira. Happiness is good. She loves her dog, Raider. After each, he reinforced the central lesson, that feeling of satisfaction to be certain of a thing. When she sounded more confident that she had the feeling down, he returned to his objective.
“It feels good, being certain about something, doesn’t it?”
“Mm. Yeah. Like a test. Where I know all the answers.”
“That’s right. You know the answers. You’re certain. Confident. No doubts.”
“No doubts.”
“All right, Kira, now repeat after me, and remember while you do how confident you are. How certain. Are you ready?”
“Mm. Repeat. Easy.”
In spite of himself, Martin was on his feet, standing well within the personal bubble he had lectured himself time and again to respect. She was making it too easy, and her hypnotically induced confidence was contagious. He was looking right down at her, at where her huddled arms pressed together a spectacular vista of cleavage, a nook so tight that if he tucked his finger in it, it looked like he might struggle to withdraw.
Only not today. Someday, but not today.
“I enjoy being hypnotized. Say it.”
“I enjoy being hypnotized.”
“And you still have that feeling, Kira. You’re sure that’s the right answer. You feel so good about yourself to say things you know are right.”
She sighed in quiet bliss. “Mmm. Feel so good.”
“I enjoy being hypnotized by Martin Manning. Say it.”
“I enjoy being hypnotized by… Professor Manning.”
The stutter around his first name betrayed that lingering hesitation, but he rushed to assure her. “That’s right, Professor Manning. It’s perfectly OK to call me that. You’re doing so well. So right.”
Like that, she was at ease again. “Mm. So right.”
“I want to be hypnotized like this every session. Say it, and know it’s right.”
“I want to be hypnotized every session.”
“I will ask Professor Manning to hypnotize me every session. Say it.”
She repeated it, verbatim that time. And on he went. Leering unabashedly, he fed her line after line.
“I’m glad to come here.”
“I like Professor Manning.”
“I trust Professor Manning.”
“It’s natural to repeat truths like this.”
“I feel happy and free when I am hypnotized.”
“Being hypnotized helps me realize things that are true.” (They took a few extra minutes to build to that admission, but once he prompted it, she offered no more resistance than on the others.)
“I listen better when I’m hypnotized.”
“I feel happy when I’m hypnotized.
“I feel relaxed when I’m hypnotized.”
“I feel so, so good right now.”
“Being hypnotized is pleasurable.” (She giggled a bit at that, but assured him it was true when he double-checked.)
With his cock threatening to rupture his zipper at the sound of the busty little minx’s breathy whisper of “pleasurable” echoing in his ears, Martin cut himself off there. He’d already been greedier than he could have ever imagined he’d have the chance to be in their first session. Her old hypnotherapist deserved a medal for priming the girl like this.
Then came the repetitions. The mantras would have to wait. In fact, their day might never come. He’d gotten away with them with Stacey because she wanted him to succeed, but Kira may well have to be handled entirely in-house. Fine by him. He could do this every day for the rest of his life and not get bored. Bit by bit, with persistent cheerfulness and unflinching obedience, Kira reiterated that she wanted this as often as possible, because she felt incredible. He made sure nothing sounded sexual, quite, and backed away from the “pleasurable” bit. No sense risking her waking up tomorrow in the midst of frigging her somnolent pussy at the thought of another session and getting curious as to why.
Eventually he let up. Stacey was in the waiting room again, which he only knew from the little thump of the office door when the exterior one opened. At least she had the good sense not to get snoopy and risk being seen by her sister, never mind that the girl was oblivious to the world except for his voice.
“Now, Kira, for a moment, I want to talk to you about Stacey.” Martin had planned to focus on this today, but Kira had distracted him from his mission.
Suddenly, her nose wrinkled intensely. “Hmm.”
Glancing at the door separating the source of her distaste, he kept his voice low. “It was big of you to ride with her here today.”
Wrinkle. “Hmm.” On second sounding, that hmm sounded like the nuh uh to the yuh huh of her mm.
“I get that you feel like you’re… not quite enough around her. Not good enough. That’s understandable.”
Wrinkle wrinkle wrinkle. Kira’s face scrunched like he’d shoved a plate of fresh steaming dog turds under it. If her face scrunched any harder, she’d either wake up, or implode.
“Is that not it?”
She shook her head with more vigor than she’d put into any motion since she’d gone under. “No. Too good.”
“Too good? Can you explain? I’m not sure I understand.”
“Stacey. Thinks I’m too good.”
Martin stroked his chin. “As in, she’s trying to take you down a peg somehow? Lessen you?”
Wrinkle. Shake. “As in, she wants to have sex with me.”
The sensation of having one’s heart stop is not a hyperbole to be lightly used. If CDC estimates are to be believed, close to a hundred Americans had died of that very condition since the beginning of Martin and Kira’s session. Although Martin cognitively considered that his heart might have ceased beating, so briefly that his mind couldn’t even register it in words, this was a misunderstanding of the effects of a panic-induced burst of adrenaline giving him a sensation of slowing time. In fact, his heart was already beginning to beat faster, not slower. In moments, it would be hammering as if he had been performing vigorous exercise, or taken a hit of ecstasy.
In any event, the momentary bout of hypochondria helped him to overlook that he had peed himself, if only just a tiny bit, and thankfully not enough to show.
“She’s your sister,” he counseled sternly, not even pausing to consider if the suggestion might harm his cause. “She couldn’t want that.”
Wrinkle. “She does.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Because she told me so.”
Martin’s incredulous gaping was met with a sudden chorus of beeps, buzzes, chimes, and other notification noises. By sheer luck, her skimpy shorts had no pockets, and so the sounds emanated from her purse lying on the floor beside the couch, and were just muffled enough on account of it. With the speed of a man possessed, Martin pounced, grabbing the purse and muffling it in the preposterous mechanism his instincts cried out for—namely, to throw it under his shirt as he dove into the corner of the room and shield it from open air by curling up around it in as tiny a ball as he could manage. He caught a glimpse of Stacey, staring incredulously through the glass door. Yet when he looked to the sofa, Kira lay still.
Ignoring the look of shock on Stacey’s face, he calmly made his way back to his station. Only then did he realize what had happened, that Kira had set her phone to block notifications until after her session. He did the same thing, in fact, though the fact that his phone had remained silent was a rather judgmental account of the gaps in their respective levels of popularity.
As for his reaction, while extreme, it had probably been the right one. It was important to bring a patient out of her trance naturally; the process was part of what helped a subject compartmentalize their time in a trance and block what had happened from their conscious mind. Skip that, and the chance she would awaken with crisp memories of him drilling her love of his hypnosis sessions into her subconscious. How he would have explained him treating her phone like a live grenade, he didn’t know, but accounted himself most fortunate that he did not have to. Kira went under in their first try nearly as deeply as her sister had by the time he was sucking on her boobs half the session.
Waking her was even quicker than the induction. Their time only went over by about five minutes, and when he at last brought her fully conscious again, the first thing she did after stretching and yawning was to seize her phone and frown.
“Wow. Did this make any noises? I’m surprised it didn’t wake me up. I wake up for a text buzz if I’m dead asleep.”
“I didn’t hear anything,” Martin lied.
“Wild. I guess you really know what you’re doing, huh?”
Martin smiled, trying not to breathe too hard. Stacey had told her what?! It was only now coming back to him. “I had an excellent patient.”
Kira grinned, tucking her phone away, easily chalking it up to an error on her part. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. You’re an excellent candidate for hypnosis. A natural. I think we’re going to make really good progress with it—if that’s an avenue you’d like to pursue, that is.”
“Absolutely!” she affirmed immediately. “Professor Manning, I feel so good right now. Like, so good. Thank you. I don’t know what else you did, but I feel like I just had the best nap I’ve had in ages. That was awesome. I can’t wait to do it again!”
Martin chuckled at her exuberance, struggling to remain mindful that he wasn’t allowed to fuck her on the spot. “Well then, until our next session, OK? I think Stacey’s waiting for us, and I probably don’t need to tell you she’s not the most patient patient.”
Kira rolled her eyes. “Ugh, I bet. Good luck with that one.”
They took to their feet as one. When he extended a hand for shaking, it prodded her right in the stomach as she came in for a hug. Awkwardly, Kira stumbled back, cheeks turning crimson. “Oh my gosh, that’s so embarrassing. I’m so sorry. I’m kind of a hugger, and I’m still sort of blissed out, and… I’m so sorry. That was so weird. I’m not a creeper or anything, Professor Manning, I promise!”
“Quite all right, Kira.” Should he…? No. No, the moment had passed. “We’ll work on it. For now, I’ll see you in tomorrow’s discussion session. All right?”
“Right! I already did the reading. I just have to finish doing the forum thing.”
“Atta girl. Would you mind sending Stacey in on your way out?”
“Sure thing. Bye, Mr. Manning!”
“Bye, Kira.”
He kept the smile frozen on his face until Kira finished waving to him through the glass, even with Stacey’s withering glare fixed on him. As soon as the girl was out of sight in the waiting room, it vanished.
“Let’s have a chat about our interactions going forward, ‘Mr. Manning.’” Stacey perched on the very edge of the couch, like she wanted to be ready to leap off and strangle him. All the while, she scowled her Stacey scowl.
For once, Martin was not put off by it, and returned it in kind. “Oh yes. Let’s do.”