The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Carol and I were project leaders at the same high-tech firm. Everyone liked working on her projects because she was super-organized, efficient, analytical, and intensely focused. She and I collaborated from time to time when her projects needed some of the technology that my team was responsible for. Our relationship was cordial, but never more than that. She didn’t socialize much, and maintained a rigidly professional demeanor even when she was at lunch or out to dinner after client meetings on the road.

Carol had a round, pretty face, masked by her thick, red-framed glasses. They gave her an owlish look that complimented her general bearing of seriousness and intelligence. She was medium height and compactly built. Her business suits were large and boxy, with padded-shoulder jackets and high-necked blouses. If the blouse didn’t have a big bow, she wore a scarf. Her legs were firm and shapely, however, and I suspected there was a nice, slender body hidden under all that fabric. I wasn’t dating anyone at the time, but for some reason Carol wasn’t really on my radar screen. Too serious, too uptight, I figured. I couldn’t imagine her laughing out loud.

I’d been teaching self-hypnosis to a number of my co-workers. I enjoyed it; I always got that little erotic thrill when I hypnotized the women, but of course I kept that bit of information to myself. As a result, I had a semi-frequent stream of referrals from people wanting to quit smoking, lose weight, sleep better, or who were just curious about the phenomenon of hypnosis. I always seemed to have more time for the women than the men, but my reputation was good. I never did parties and I always turned down requests for stage hypnosis-type stunts.

We didn’t have much in the way of privacy in our offices. Our CEO was a huge fan of Intel and its open-office environment. So we had desks, bookcases, plants, and faint, pink noise coming from a hundred ceiling-mounted speakers. We had a couple of conference rooms, however, and a glorified closet that we called a library, packed to the ceiling with documentation and manuals, with some old chairs, a vinyl sofa, and a Formica-topped table. I needed to pull some documentation on a fairly complex module I’d designed a couple of years before, but I’d forgotten some of the details. I walked in, and Carol was sitting at the table, a manual on one side and a big stack of printout on the other, her notebook in the middle, taking notes in her precise hand.

She said hello with a little half-smile and went back to work. I pulled down the documentation I needed, sat down at the table, and dug in. We did our research in silence for about half an hour, then she closed the manual, folded the printout, and closed her notebook. She clasped her hands atop the notebook, turned to me, and said, “I understand that you know how to hypnotize.”

I was a bit startled, but I replied, “Why, yes, I do. And I teach people how to do self-hypnosis, too.”

She looked at me in her serious way. “That’s very interesting. May I ask you a few questions about it?”

“Sure, go ahead.”

“What does it feel like to be hypnotized?”

“Want me to show you?” I shrugged.

“No, I’d prefer to understand more about it first. How do you put a person into a ‘trance?’”

“Lots of different ways. I could do some mental or physical manipulations that would make you feel a bit disoriented, which would result in increased suggestibility. I would intensify that state of mind, and you’d find yourself in a relaxed, dreamlike state of mind, kind of like reaching into your car as you’re driving along and throwing it into neutral....”

“It doesn’t sound as if I would have much say in the matter,” she interjected.

“You would and you wouldn’t. In a sense, hypnosis is nothing more than establishing a direct line of communication with your subconscious mind. The part that we call our conscious mind doesn’t have to be aware of the communication, but the part of you represented by your subconscious is fully aware of the interaction.”

“Interesting. And potentially unsettling.” She always talked like that. “I infer that you’ve described one end of a continuum. What’s the other end like?”

“If I want you to understand how you got into the trance state and have you more consciously aware of the process, I would first have you relax physically, progressively...”

“You mean like those ‘relax your toes, now your ankles’ techniques for falling asleep?”

“Exactly. Then I give you mental imagery to increase that relaxation. As a natural result, your level of suggestibility naturally rises, and your imagination begins to align itself with the state we call ‘trance....’” She followed my explanation carefully, nodding, asking additional questions, absorbing the answers. Subjects often go into a light trance during these pre-induction descriptions, but I couldn’t detect any signs of it in her.

“So can everyone be hypnotized?”

“Yes, the vast majority of people can, but to different degrees. But one of the most interesting things is that most everyone experiences hypnosis differently. If I give the same suggestion to ten people, they may all carry out the suggestion, but the way they perceive it internally and the way they carry it out may be vastly different. One might ‘forget’ that the suggestion came from me, that it was her own idea. Another might feel robotically compelled to carry it out. Yet another might understand that the suggestion came from me, but would come up with an elaborate internal explanation as to why she did it.”

She’d obviously heard from other coworkers that I’d helped them in various ways, and she quizzed me on hypnosis as an aid to stress reduction. I gave her the standard pitch, and told her that I often used self-hypnosis to help me unwind after a busy day.

“That’s fascinating. I can see why you’re so interested in the subject,” she said in that serious way of hers. She looked at her watch, and I glanced at mine. It was about 6:30. Most people knocked off by then, but Carol often worked later than everyone else. She looked back at me and said, “I’m not sure I could learn to hypnotize myself, but I’m curious to know what it’s like. I’d like for you to try to hypnotize me. Do you have the time?”

I had no plans for the evening, so I agreed. I didn’t take the “try to” as a challenge. She hadn’t given me any early indications that she would be a good subject, but you never know.

She removed her red glasses, closed the temple pieces with a crisp ‘click-click’, and set them on the table between us. Without the de-magnifying effect of the lenses, her eyes were agreeably large, nicely shaped, and a pretty shade of blue.

“Close your eyes and relax,” I said. “Concentrate on the muscles that open and close your eyes. Relax those muscles completely. Let them become very relaxed, and tell me when you’ve got them very relaxed.”

After a moment or two, she said, “They’re relaxed.”

“Very good. Now I’m going to count to three, and when I reach three, you’ll feel a wave of relaxation pass through your eyelids, making them twice as relaxed as they are now. Even though they feel very relaxed, they’ll feel twice as relaxed as I reach three. One... two... three. Let a wave of relaxation pass through your eyelids, making them twice as relaxed. How do they feel now?”

“Very relaxed.”

“Good. Very good. Now I’m going to count to three again, and they’ll become even more relaxed, so relaxed that if you were to try to open them, they’d simply refuse, preferring to stay in this relaxed, closed state. Ready? One... two... three. They’re completely relaxed now, so relaxed that if you tried to open them, they’d just stay closed, relaxed. You can try to open them, but the more you try, the more relaxed they’ll become.”

Her eyebrows worked up and down a few times, but her eyes stayed shut. “Oh, that’s interesting,” she said. “It’s as if they’re disconnected.”

I could tell she was going to be a talker. Most subjects go silent, and they only reply to questions, short answers at that. But a few dissociate, and part of their mind remains active, even commenting on the proceedings, while the rest is entranced. Carol’s keen, analytical mind was ticking away, observing the part of her that was going into hypnosis.

I then told her to spread the relaxation she was experiencing in her eye muscles to all the muscles in her body, then suggested a couple of additional waves of relaxation that would flush away all the tension.

“How do you feel now, Carol?”

“Mmm, wonderful. Like sunbathing on a beach after a long swim.”

Could I ask for any more in a subject? She was even giving me her personal imagery for deepening her trance. I tried to imagine her in a bikini, but the only image I could conjure in my mind was of her lying on the sand in her gray-striped power suit.

“Think about being there on the beach,” I said. “You can hear the waves breaking gently on the sand, a soft, regular sound. You feel the warmth of the sand beneath you and the warmth of the sun above you. The warmth of the sand is melting into you, relaxing you more. The warmth of the sun is melting into you, relaxing you even more, as if the two were trying to meet deep inside you. Feel the warmth melting through you, relaxing you, relaxing you deeply.”

“Mmm, very nice.”

“As you continue to relax, listen to the waves breaking on the shoreline. Think about the waves, how they break, roll up the beach a short way, then roll out again. Imagine that you’re casting your tensions, any cares that you have, onto the wave, letting the wave carry it away from you, carry it out to sea. A wave comes in, breaks, and as it rolls back out to sea, takes away tension and cares, leaving you more relaxed. Another wave comes in, breaks, and as it rolls back out to sea, takes away more tension and cares, leaving you even more relaxed.”

After a couple more of these, she was pretty deep. Lately I’d been teaching my subjects to report their own depth by imagining a yardstick, with one inch representing normal consciousness and thirty-six being as deeply relaxed as they could imagine. It was a helpful technique for self-hypnosis, too.

“... and when I say, ‘What’s your depth?’ allow a number to pop into your mind, between one and thirty-six, and this will be a gauge of your depth.”

She nodded. “What’s your depth now, Carol?”

“Twenty.”

“Very good. How do you feel?”

“This is really quite remarkable. I feel as though I’m standing outside myself, watching you hypnotize me, only it’s just my body; my mind is out here.”

Again, I was amazed that she was so verbal in a medium-depth trance, but it was classic dissociation. “As you watch yourself sitting here, Carol, imagine that I’m tying a big boquet of helium balloons to your wrist. The pull from the balloons is quite strong, so strong that it’s going to pull your arm right into the air; you can see them lifting your arm into the air. And as it rises, you’re relaxing more, going deeper, much deeper.”

Her arm lifted smoothly, without further prompting. I could see a faint look of surprise on her face as she felt her arm rise. But the surprised look was fleeting as the trance deepened and her head lolled to one side. I let her sit there for a minute, with her arm almost straight over her head, her shoulder raised as though the balloons were really pulling on her wrist.

“What’s your depth now, Carol?”

“Thirty.”

“Very good. Continue to relax more and more. And now the balloons are coming free, one by one, and as your arm sinks down, you relax even more, deeper and deeper, more deeply relaxed....”

“Ohhh, this is very relaxing.” she was having trouble forming the words, her facial muscles so relaxed that she mumbled a bit. “Very nice.”

Her arm fell, not to the table, but limply at her side. “What’s your depth now, Carol?”

“Forty-seven.”

I thought about that one. Then I realized that I had said “as deeply relaxed as you can imagine.” She was now deeper than she had imagined. I decided to confirm it.

“Forty-seven?”

“Yes,” she mumbled. “I needed a longer yardstick.”

I had her imagine a vase on the table with a rose in it, She smelled the rose, stroked its petals, replaced it. We went through a number of other phenomena, and she apppeared to enjoy the tour. I told her that she would return to this state whenever I said, “Carol, deeply relaxed.” I then awakened her.

She still looked a little bleary as I asked her how she liked it, knowing, of course, that she’d like it, since that was part of the awakening suggestions.

“Oh, that was wonderful! So relaxing, yet so interesting.” She squinted a little to bring me into focus, but started right in again with the questions. “Now about what you were saying before about self-hypnosis and hypnosis being the same thing. Can I hypnotize myself by saying ‘Carol, deeply relaxed’ to myself? Ohhh....”

Her eyes closed and the tension went out of her body.

“I didn’t expect that.” She was back in the trance, but still analyzing. “It seems inconvenient if I can’t even say the phrase without going into hypnosis.”

“You wanted to hypnotize yourself, Carol. That’s why you’re in a trance now.”

“But would I still respond to your suggestions?”

“Sure.”

“But what if someone else said it?”

“Imagine that scenario in your mind. Is that something you would want to happen?”

“No...”

“Then it won’t happen. Also, imagine us discussing hypnosis and using ‘Carol, deeply relaxed’ in a conversational way rather than with the intention of bringing about the trance.”

“Yes, I see what you mean.”

“But watch what happens now: Carol, deeply relaxed.”

“Oh, I just went deeper.”

“That’s very nice, isn’t it? What’s your depth now?”

“Thirty-five. Yes, very nice.”

I coached her a little on how to apply self-hypnosis and how to give herself suggestions, then had her awaken herself for practice. She came out of the trance with a smile, put her glasses back on, and stretched. Not surprisingly, she didn’t look as tightly wound as usual, but she was still her serious self.

We talked a little more, discussing things she could do with self-hypnosis and some of the other interesting hypnotic phenomena. I’d found that people often remain in a light trance after a session like this one, and I sometimes liked to play with their heads with “waking” suggestions or reinducing a deeper trance through some disguised techniques. Despite the depth of her trance just minutes before and her surprising suggestibility, Carol didn’t respond to any of my subliminals. She just continued the conversation as before, as though hypnosis were just an interesting thing to talk about.

She thanked me for spending the time with her and rose, gathering her armload of stuff. I stood too, and held the library door open for her so she wouldn’t drop anything. She paused at the doorway and thanked me again. Her eyes looked small and distant behind her thick lenses. I looked out at the office. The place was deserted. On a whim, I said, “Carol, deeply relaxed.”

She blinked twice, then said, “I’m sorry, but there are some things I must attend to,” and walked back to her cubicle. I went back into the library and tried to make sense of what had happened. I’d never had anyone accept, then reject a posthypnotic suggestion before.

It wasn’t a big deal, but it gnawed at me for the rest of the week. I even went back to some of my textbooks, looking for similarities. I didn’t find any. Then I had an idea, a theory on what it would take to rehypnotize Carol. I’d have to find the right time and place to test my hypothesis. I made my plan, and watched for my opportunity.

A week passed. Then a couple of days later I saw her head into the library with her usual armload of stuff. I checked my watch. 5:30. Perfect.

I said goodnight to a bunch of people as they headed out, and turned down an invitation to go out for a beer. At around 6:00 I got up, went into the library, and let the door close behind me. Carol was seated in her usual place and didn’t even look up. I went to the table, directly across from her.

“Carol.”

She looked up in mild surprise, as though realizing for the first time that there was someone else in the room. As she began to smile and say “Hi, ...,” I reached down and removed her glasses, closing the temple pieces with that same, distinctive, quick, click-click that she had. She stared at me myopically.

And stared.

And stared some more.

I walked around to her side of the table. Her eyes continued to gaze at where I had been. I lifted her left arm from the table. It stayed right where I left it. I pulled back on her shoulders, so that she rested against the chair back. As I did so, her other arm came off the table, as though she were a mannequin. She was in a deep trance, completely cataleptic.

It was the glasses. In thinking about it, I’d realized that when she wanted me to hypnotize her she removed them. When she felt that the session was over, that she had other commitments, she put them back on. They were a symbolic wall, and a literal one, too. So when I removed them and closed them the same way she had, I evidently tapped deeply into her personal symbolism. By “taking charge” of the glasses, I’d bypassed all of her defenses and she literally had no choice but to go into a deep trance. I decided to explore its depth and intensity.

I looked at her face, still staring off into nowhere, my name still partly formed on her lips. I was tempted to steal a kiss, but decided that a one-sided kiss would be rather uninteresting. Her lips were twitching a little, as though she was trying to say something.

“You can speak, Carol.”

“I’m ... hypnotized....”

No kidding, I thought. Only her lips moved. Everything else remained frozen in place.

“What’s your depth, Carol?”

“Forty... Fifty? Very deep....”

That was the problem with self-reported depth scales. Her original yardstick was based on her expectation, not on any objective points of reference. She’d exhibited deep-trance behaviors the first time and now was even deeper, far deeper than she’d had any notion of.

I realized that she hadn’t blinked since she’d entered the trance. “Your eyes can blink whenever they feel dry.”

She blinked a couple of times, but her stare remained fixed. Her lips twitched again. I said, “It’s okay to speak. You can say whatever is on your mind.”

“My glasses...” she mumbled.

“They are your shield, aren’t they?”

“Yes. Didn’t realize. Removing them. That was so... powerful.”

“How do you feel right now, Carol?”

“Fine. Floating. Waiting.”

“What are you waiting for?”

“Don’t know. Suggestions.”

“What do you see now?”

“Nothing. Gray”

I stepped in front of her. “And now?”

“You.”

I stepped out of her line of sight. “And now?”

“Nothing.”

Hmm, interesting. She appeared to be completely focused, utterly fixated on me, all from the spontaneous trance caused by removing her glasses. Cool.

“Tell me what went through your mind when I took off your glasses.”

She paused for a moment. “I was surprised. Then hypnotized. Then paralyzed.”

I wondered if she knew she was making rhymes.

“What else?”

“I felt like you’d removed more than my glasses.”

“What do you mean?”

“My defenses. Everything.”

“Everything?”

She blushed. “Everything.”

The flush in her cheeks spread to what little I could see of her neck above the big bow collar of her blouse. Unless I was mistaken, she looked like she was aroused, and the sight of that, plus my pleasure at the spontaneous trance, caused my hormone levels to surge.

“What’s going on in your mind right now?”

A pause. Then, “Sleep. Shower. Sex. Sleep. Shower. Sex.”

I could almost hear myself pulsing against my zipper. “Please explain.”

She blushed even more deeply. “Those are when I remove my glasses.”

I stood behind her and lifted her up by her shoulders, pulling the chair out with my foot. She stood, her arms still at crazy angles. I brought them down until they were at her sides, but slightly away from her body. She was still looking up, as though at the ceiling. I stood in front of her and said, “Look here, Carol,” and she brought her gaze down to meet mine. I took stock of her: navy blue suit, hem slightly below the knee, boxy jacket down to her hips, held closed by three big buttons, creamy silk blouse with a big pussycat bow at her throat. Stockings, sensible, low-heeled shoes.

I unbuttoned the first button. She didn’t flinch, but I thought her nostrils flared slightly. Same with the second. Her blush deepened as I undid the third. I removed the jacket from her shoulders, slipping it down over first one arm, then the other. Her face was expressionless, but her nostrils were definitely flared and her breathing had changed, becoming more rapid and shallow.

I looked at the library door. I knew we were probably the last people in the building, but I didn’t know what time the cleaning crew got here. The door had a bolt that could be locked from the inside. I twisted it and turned around to look at her. Her figure would never elicit wolf whistles, but what I could see of it through the blouse was trim, with high, small breasts and a slender waist. Why she hid it under all that upholstery was anybody’s guess.

I put my hand behind her neck, fingers in her hair, and kissed her gently on the cheek. “Is this what you want, Carol?”

“Yes,” she said softly.

She remained frozen as I pulled the free ends of the bow at her neck. It came undone with a soft, silken sigh, and I unwound the ends, which wrapped once around her neck, then became part of the neck of the blouse, Small buttons ran up the back of the blouse. I stepped behind her and undid them one by one, revealing thin, freckled shoulders and the horizontal while line of her bra. I released the two hooks and slid my hands forward, cupping her small, firm, breasts gently. They filled my hands nicely, and her nipples were rigid under my fingers. I pulled her towards me, and she fell back against me from her heels, still in mannequin mode.

“Please,” she said.

“Please what, Carol?”

“Please don’t humiliate me.”

I’d never had a subject make a request before. Another first. I stopped caressing her breasts and stepped back into her field of view. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing perverted.”

One woman’s perversion is another’s screaming pleasure. “What’s perverted, Carol?”

“A... anal sex.”

Another fascinating contradiction. She was telling me what she didn’t want, but implying that she’d be powerless to stop me. My standing behind her must have made her nervous. But fine with me. I had little use for it. After all, why let a perfectly good vagina go to waste? “I promise,” I said. “Everything else is OK?”

“Yes.”

I brought my hand down over her still-staring eyes, and they closed obediently. I pulled her blouse free from her skirt and removed it and the bra over her arms, still slightly out from her body. Then her shoes, skirt, half slip, pantyhose, and panties. Slip? I thought to myself. Who wears a slip anymore?

I looked at her as she stood there, feet slightly apart, arms away from the sides of her body. Her small breasts were high and firm, her figure was trim, lithe, without an ounce of fat. She looked like a female action figure minus the big boobs. Lines of muscle and tendon suggested themselves around her shoulders, and her tummy showed a trace of definition. This was a well cared-for body.

“What kind of exercise do you do, Carol?”

“Swim.”

I thought back to her imagery in our earlier session about relaxing on the beach after a long swim. Now I could envision her in a bathing suit. I smiled to myself at the absurdity—here I was, looking at her slender nakedness and imagining her in a bathing suit. “Your body is very beautiful, Carol. You’re an attractive woman.”

She made no response. I thought about posing her some more, perhaps arranging her on the table. But I wanted more interaction, not a passive receptacle. I said, “Your body is free to move, Carol, free to respond however it wants.”

She relaxed visibly, her eyes still closed. I stepped close to her and bent down to kiss the top of her shoulder, then slid my lips up the side of her neck, to her earlobe. I couldn’t detect any perfume, just the faint smell of her shampoo. She tilted her head to the side, exposing her neck, pulling taut the tendons under her smooth skin. I followed the lines back down again, then into the hollow of her throat, along her other collarbone, then up the other side of her neck. She lifted her arms slowly and placed them on my waist. I reached down with one hand, unbuckling my belt and unbuttoning my pants, my other arm around her back, my hand gently tracing the lines of her shoulder blades. She grabbed my shirt with both hands and began to tug it upwards, out of my pants. Her fingers fumbled with the buttons, so I helped. Then her hands were on my chest, her fingers seeking my nipples.

I returned the greeting. Her nipples were small, but in proportion to her breasts, and they became art-gum eraser hard, without much protrusion. I held my hand against one, drawing circles on my palm with the nipple, and bent down to take the other in my mouth. I flicked my tongue rapidly across it, sucking at the same time, and her knees buckled. She threw her arms around my neck to catch herself as I simultaneously put an arm around her waist and another under her knees. Next thing I knew, I was holding her in my arms and she was tight against my chest. She seemed almost weightless as I carried her to the brown vinyl sofa and laid her down.

I quickly shucked my clothes and knelt between her legs. I streteched out over her, my cock brushing her belly, and opened her mouth with my tongue. She sucked on it greedily and probed back with her own. I ran my hands up and down her slender, firm body, and she gripped convulsively at my back, at my bottom, urging me towards her, spreading her legs, inviting me in.

I accepted the invitation gratefully. She was wet, open, hungry. We made love fast and hard, and she came hard, making a little high-pitched growling noise in her throat. After that, I slowed way down, keeping up more of a slow, rhythmic pressure than a real stroke. I spoke quietly in her ear, “Follow the rhythm, Carol. Find the pattern, follow the pattern, and you’ll know when to come again.” I’d read about this little lovemaking technique and fantasized about the time when I’d get to use it. I realized that Carol was the ideal partner for it.

I pulled back, then made seven small, shallow strokes, barely penetrating her. On the eighth, I went deep, all the way to the hilt. She didn’t move during the seven, as if listening with her body. But on the eighth, her hips rose up convulsively to meet mine, just half a beat behind my deep, deliberate thrust. I pulled back again, and made six shallow strokes, then went deep and hard twice. She didn’t anticipate the change on the seventh, but was right there with me on the eigth. Again I pulled back and made five light, shallow strokes. She’d figured out the pattern, and anticipated the hard, deep, sixth stroke. Her hips bucked and she met me in an engulfing motion on it and the two following deep strokes, then relaxed for the four light, teasing strokes that she knew would come next. Hey, as long as you have a fine, analytical mind, you might as well harness it for ultimate pleasure, right?

Her body was aglow in sweat by the time I got to the last cycle. I pulled back slowly, so slowly, until I was nearly out of her, made a small, feinting motion, then went in hard and deep. She was right with me—hard, harder, harder, deep, deeper, deeper. On the eighth, she exploded in a stifled shriek, writhing, clutching spasmodically at my back, her short, neatly trimmed fingernails looking for purchase on my backside. Her eager clutching caught me up in her orgasm, and I came too, with a deep, from-my-feet groan.

I stayed inside her as I shrank a bit, but her little vaginal squeezes and winding-down motions kept me somewhat firm. She started breathing hard again, but through her nose, and she squeezed my bottom one more time as she had another, smaller orgasm. I kept my weight on my elbows, my hands under her shoulder blades. We rested that way for perhaps ten minutes. I finally slipped out of her, unstuck my forearms from the vinyl, and stood up. She looked so slender and fragile there, a sharp contrast to the awful old brown sofa. I fished my handkerchief out of my pants pocket, cleaned myself up, then tucked it neatly between her legs.

“What’s your depth now, Carol?”

“Twenty.” I wasn’t surprised that all the physical exertion had considerably lightened her trance.

“How do you feel?”

“Wonderful.”

“Is this what you wanted?”

“Yes...” I caught a hesitancy or incompleteness in her answer..

“Yes, but...?”

“Yes, but you must never do this again without my permission.” Sheesh. First making requests, now giving me orders. Some day I’m going to have to write a “Proper Behavior for Hypnotized Subjects” manual, I mused.

“But this time was okay?”

“Yes.”

“What do you want to happen next?”

“You... dress me...” That same hesitancy.

“Then what?”

“I... I don’t know. We talk. Or have dinner. I don’t know.” I didn’t have a plan, either.

“Do you want to remember everything that happened here, misremember, or forget?”

“Remember everything.”

I pulled on my underpants, sat her up, refolded the handkerchief, placed it in the crotch of her panties, and pulled them up, having her stand as I got them up and over her firm little bottom. I put her bra back on while she was standing, then had her sit again while I tackled her pantyhose. I figured out that I had to keep them bunched as I slipped each foot into the stocking, then release the sheer fabric a little at a time as I slid it up her legs, alternating from one to the other. I had to half-sit behind her and reach down, pretty much as she would do.

She leaned against me, with a blissful look on her face. “You dressing me is sexier than undressing me.”

I didn’t understand that, but I continued, with her slip, skirt, and blouse. I made a halfhearted attempt at the bow, but gave up, figuring that she was dressed enough. I dressed myself, picked up her glasses from the table, and placed them carefully over her ears and settled them onto the bridge of her nose. She opened her eyes and looked at me with an unreadable expression. She stepped up to me, put her arms around my waist, and pressed the side of her face against my chest.

“Do you really think I’m attractive, Lucky?”

“Yes, Carol. Very attractive. But you manage to hide it well.”

She sighed and squeezed me tighter. Then she pulled back and looked me straight in the eye. “You took me by surprise.” Then a completely uncharacteristic, coquettish smile. “Then you took me.”

“You liked it, didn’t you?”

“Are you kidding? I loved it! You’re a terrific lover, and you’re exactly what I needed. But as I told you, I don’t want you to do that again.”

“You mean I’m just a one-night stand?”

“We’ll figure that one out later. I think I understand enough about what happened to know that I must have wanted you pretty badly, without even realizing it. But if we make love again, it has to be a mutual decision or you have to have my implicit consent.”

“Hey, no argument from me.”

We finished cleaning up and dressing, then left separately for a local pub more notable for its high booths and dark lighting than for the quality of its food. We found a booth, wine for her, beer for me, ordered sandwiches, and talked.

I told her that I knew less about her than virtually anyone else in the company, and given the current situation and her desire to talk, that perhaps that should change. I was especially curious about her uptight, overclothed, overcontrolled demeanor, when someone quite different clearly lived beneath the surface. She sighed and told me a long, somewhat painful story of an older sister who was a wild child, a partying hellion, into drinking, drugs, and every kind of trouble. Carol was the obedient, well-behaved child, the one that her mother never had to worry about. Her overcompensation for her sister carried over into every aspect of her life, including her anti-sexy wardrobe and her overachieving, all-business attitude.

“Where’s your sister now?”

“Finally at rest. She died a couple of years ago. It wasn’t pretty.”

I was silent for a minute, reflecting on the family tragedy that haunted her.

“I recognize some of my sister’s traits in myself,” she said. “Not the self-destructive overindulgence, but the capacity to lose myself in something. It frightens me.”

“So you channel it all into your work?”

“That’s right,” she sighed. “So beyond being a ray of hope for my mother, I’ve kept a pretty tight lid on things to keep myself on the straight and narrow. I know that I’m wrapped too tight. I’ve done some time in therapy over the years, trying to loosen up. But I haven’t had much success. I think—I know—I wanted to feel what total abandon was like, but again, with a limit. You gave me that chance.”

I nodded and returned her serious look. “Were you turned on the first time I hypnotized you?”

“Um, not in a major way. But I did feel vulnerable and somewhat exposed when I took my glasses off.

“So tell me more about what happened when I took your glasses off tonight.”

She brightened. “Oh, that was so amazing! How did you know?”

“I’d been thinking about it for a week. Even researched it. I’d never had anyone say ‘Thanks, maybe later’ to a posthypnotic suggestion.”

She blushed at that. “I’m flattered that you devoted that much energy to me. When you took them off, it was as if you’d hit my hold button.” She blushed again. “And another button. I know that it’s all supposed to be self-hypnosis, but I had ceded total control to you and I wanted—no, part of me needed—to see what that was like.” Another blush. “But even that was conditional, wasn’t it?”

“Not much of a limitation in my book. I didn’t come into the library with the intention of seducing you, but the situation became so charged with sexual energy that it seemed like the right thing.”

“It was,” she said simply.

Then she gave me another one of those completely out-of-character coquettish smiles, saying, “But if we ever make love in the library again, you get the bottom position.”

As I recovered from my laughter, she began gathering her things. “I don’t care if we go to your place or mine, but I want you to make love to me one more time tonight. You can hypnotize me or not. But I haven’t felt this close to anyone in years, and I want you now.”

We went back to her place. “I’d like to remove your glasses now,” I said.

“I’d like that, too.”

I took them off, closed them with that click-click motion, and placed them on her coffee table. She went cataleptic again, and I slipped off her jacket. I ran my hands over her body until she was flushed, breathing hard, and trembling at my touch. I removed the rest of her clothes again, then had her remove mine. I wasn’t as fit as she was, but my body was nothing to be ashamed of. I had her lead me to the bedroom, and I picked up her glasses as we passed the table. I laid her down on the bed and stroked her limbs in a way that implied mesmeric rigidity, then knelt between her legs.

I placed her hands on my cock and said, “Feel the pulsations, Carol. Feel the throbbing. Feel how much I want you. Let your fingers learn all the wonderful textures and shapes.”

At the same time, I spread my fingers in her patch and stroked her outer lips with my thumb, picking up her moisture, deepening and lengthening my stroke each time, ending with a cirular trip around her little pleasure button. It was swollen, engorged, bright pink, protruding just a bit from her lips. I pressed her lips to either side of it with my fingers, rubbing hard and fast, using her natural lubrication and the soft cushioning of her lips to spread the pleasure. I barely touched the pink, protruding portion with my other thumb. She clutched my cock convulsively as wave after wave of orgasmic pleasure shot through her, first moaning, then shrieking, then incapable of any sound except for her hard, fast breathing. Her body was covered with a fine sheen of sweat.

I released her limbs from their catalepsy, then stretched out beside her on the bed. I combed the damp strands of hair away from her face with my fingers, kissed her lightly, then slipped her glasses on. She opened her eyes in surprise, then smiled and kissed me. I entered her gently. I lay still and hard inside her and she held me tightly, pulling back once to search my face, then burying her face in my neck.

After a while, she began to move her hips. I matched her motions, letting her set the pace. Soon we were off on another orgasmic ride, but I was concentrating on my own pleasure, pulling her bottom to me, grinding into her, finally releasing exploding gasping moaning with pleasure. My orgasm triggered another in her, and she echoed my short, frenzied strokes with her own.

We lay there, collapsed, exhausted, intertwined. We both fell asleep, and I awoke perhaps half an hour later to find her looking at me.

We showered together, toweled one another off, thought about making love again, but both of us had client meetings the next day and decided that there was plenty of time over the weekend for some extended athletics.

My handkerchief, clean, pressed, and neatly folded, was on my chair the next morning when I came to work. Where do women find the time to do these things?

She arrived at my place on Saturday. I made brunch. By Sunday afternoon, we were both pleasantly exhausted. We ordered Chinese and sat at my kitchen table, eating from the cardboard containers, washing it down with a couple of beers. She went into serious mode again between bites of General Cho’s chicken.

Her expression was unreadable as she said, “I would be very surprised to learn that I was the first woman to succumb to your hypnotic persuasions.”

I smiled and raised my eyebrows in mock innocence.

“In fact, I would guess that you get a kinky pleasure from hypnotizing women and creating erotically charged situations.”

“Guiilty as charged, Your Honor,” I said, as she continued to give me that owlish, dissecting look.

“Well, that’s a pretty strange kink, Lucky, a new one on me.” She relaxed and smiled as she said, “I like it. I like what it does to me. I like what you do to me.”

Our relationship never blossomed into a love affair, but we became close. We were friends, but we shared an intimate link, more than just an outlet for occasional sexual release. We had a deep connection on one level, but our interests didn’t intersect in a lot of other areas. She was always flattered and eager when I wanted her, and she made her wants known to me, too. Most of our couplings involved sexual hypnosis, sometimes not. Asking for her consent became a standing, private joke.

But hypnotized or not, she was utterly uninhibited with me, a ravenous lover, not a shred of self-consciousness about her nakedness as she padded around my apartment or hers. I think it helped her in her daily life. She gradually shed the upholstery-and-drapes look for lighter, more flattering clothes, but it certainly wasn’t one of those nun-to-whore fantasy transitions. People noticed the difference and she started to have a social life. Guys began to ask her out. I wasn’t jealous; it wasn’t like that between us.

About a year later, Carol accepted a job as VP of development for a prestigious firm on the other coast. We try to connect when business travel brings us together, but our schedules are hard to match up.

She called me recently.

She was all business at first, asking if our company would agree to develop a module for one of their products, under subcontract. We dickered a bit over deliverables, costs, and completion dates, and I put her on hold while I bounced it off the boss. It was OK with him, and she was happy when I conveyed the news.

We both knew that one or the other of us would have to get on a plane to sign the contract and get the ball rolling, but neither of us said anything about it as the tone of our conversation lightened and we caught up on what was going on in one another’s lives.

“Guess what?” she said teasingly. “I’m getting contacts! So what are you going to do now, Mr. Hypnotist?”

“I guess I’ll just talk to you softly and gently, like this, softly, and gently, and as you hear my soft, soothing voice, you relax, you relax more and more, find your self drifting, drifting, into a deep, restful, relaxing trance,” I replied. “And as I speak, you find your desire to see me growing, becoming a want, becoming a need....”

Half an hour after we hung up I got a fax from her with her flight and arrival information and the words, “Consent granted” in her precise hand.