The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

June dreamed she was at the corner store, eating dinner at the counter. The man behind it kept telling her that the way she was sitting was wrong. She moved around around but it didn’t help. Then she got bored with him and started pulling things off of the shelves to eat: bubblegum that was shaped like a cookie, beef jerky that was shaped like a miniature train set.

Something rubbed against her leg. She looked down. It was a puppy, smiling and wagging its tail. It ran around in a circle when it saw her looking at it, then came back and rolled over to have its tummy rubbed. She reached down and rubbed.

The man behind the counter said something else. Not to eat something, maybe it was the Pringles. Whatever.

When she looked down again the dog had turned into Haley.

She lay on her back, her sandy hair spread out in a fan across the floor, arms above her head. Her white dress shirt had come untucked and the bottom buttons were undone, showing a triangle of skin between her waist and breastbone. June’s hand was in the triangle. The white of the girl’s bra peeked through the tip of it.

She wiggled, her legs drawing against each other. They strained in the dress slacks, making her body twist back and forth in a sinuous motion: left as the right leg came up, then right. When she moved her stomach would tighten for a moment. June could feel it.

She woke up.

There was something on her shoulder.

It was heavy and soft. It was roundish. It was snoring.

Please let that not be a waitress.

June looked down. It was a waitress.

Her head was on June’s left shoulder and her arms were wrapped around June’s left arm, hugging it between her breasts like a teddy bear. June was surprised to find her own right arm was draped over Haley’s waist, and she wondered when her limbs had started doing things without asking her first. She removed it.

They lay on top of the covers, both fully clothed. They were even still wearing their shoes. Her feet were cramped and uncomfortable. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept with her shoes on, if she ever had.

She got up, drawing her arm out of the girl’s sleepy grip and placing her head on the pillow as gently as she could.

Haley mumbled and rolled over. Her dress shirt was bunched up and pulled tight against her in places; the buttons over her neck and chest looked about to pop off, and her bra strap was a raised ridge in a line around her, a reverse imprint like train tracks under snow. It didn’t look comfortable. June debated waking her and decided against it. She got some sweats from a drawer instead and changed in the bathroom, then put some coffee on.

When she came back in Haley was sitting up, blinking and rubbing her eyes. They looked at each other for an awkward moment.

“I’m sorry,” Haley said, “I don’t usually wake up in strange women’s beds.” She looked around. “Not on Wednesdays.”

“Yeah, I don’t usually wake up with strange girls in my bed either.”

“What, so now I’m strange?”

June laughed, then regretted it. Pain shot through her head like a red line. Her brain felt too big for her skull, like it was pressing against the inside of it, and every time her heart beat, it inflated more. She covered her eyes.

“There’s coffee in the kitchen. And aspirin. If you want to change, have a look around, take anything you want. That can’t be comfortable. I’ll give you a ride home as soon as I figure out what happened to my car.” She opened the blinds and they both winced.

“Shit.” Haley looked out.

The snowbanks were higher than either of them had seen in years. They extended a few feet into the road on both sides, and between them, the road itself was a white ribbon. The sky was gray: more was coming. Good conditions to get killed by a plow, buried in a bank, and not found for weeks.

“Damn,” June said.

“Do you remember where we left it?”

“An intersection. I dunno. I’ll see if we can get a ride. Bathroom’s in there,” she motioned, “shower’s all yours if you feel like it. I think there’s even a spare toothbrush under the sink.”

“That’s an idea.” She took her shoes off and rubbed the arches of her feet, then hopped towards the bathroom. June went to the kitchen and had some coffee, then dialed Ringo.

“Mornin Sunshine!” His voice was too loud. She held the ear piece away from her ear.

“I seem to have lost my car.”

“Yeah, you were pretty out of it. It was like trying to make two drugged lions walk up stairs.”

“Why’d you—” she dropped her voice, “why’d you bring her here?”

“Seen the roads? Plus, I couldn’t get her address out of either of you. She said she lived ‘in a hollow tree’, and you just kept grabbing my face and saying I got your nose!“

June did remember, vaguely, getting his nose.

“Heh. Sorry. Thanks, Ringo.”

“Sure. But Bug,” and his voice dropped too, “do me a favor and let’s keep this to an annual thing. Rose is really understanding, and she knows that I have friends with certain... tendencies... and she knows there’s nothing going on between us, obviously—but it’s still running out of the house in the middle of the night for another woman.”

“That’s stupid. You should dump her and date someone less stupid.”

“And I’m sure she would like you even more if she heard you say that. You’ve never had a girlfriend, have you?”

June glanced at the bathroom door. “Sure I have.”

“K, that was a rhetorical question and you took it to a weird place.”

“Car?”

“At the end of Ash, where it dead-ends into Elm. You’ve probably got a ticket if it hasn’t been towed. I’d give you a ride but Rose wants to do stuff. You still coming out Christmas shopping tonight?”

“Sure. Thanks, Ringo.”

“Be good.”

She wished he’d stop saying that.

She hung up, turned the corner towards the bedroom, and stopped. Haley was standing in the bathroom doorway, a towel wrapped around her body and another around her head. Her skin was still wet and pink from the hot shower. A drop of water ran from her shoulder to her elbow.

At first she seemed to be looking at June, but after a moment it became clear that wasn’t so. She wasn’t looking at anything in particular; she seemed to be staring at a point in the air. Her eyes were only half open. They seemed dim.

“Haley?”

She didn’t answer. She stood perfectly still, her hands by her sides where the towel curved around her hips. The wrapping ended high up on her thigh; below, another drop ran down the inside of her leg and gathered with some others in a small pool on the threshold.

“Haley?” June approached her. “You there?”

“Yes.” Her voice was flat.

“C’mon. Ringo can’t give us a ride. We’re gonna have to walk.”

Haley didn’t react. Another drop began to make a trip down her shoulder. June’s stomach tightened.

“Snap out of it.”

Haley made a confused expression for a few moments, then her face relaxed and became neutral again. She showed no sign of snapping out of it. She was a life-sized doll wrapped in a damp towel. It was tucked in over the swell of her left breast, but the makeshift knot was coming undone each time she breathed: each time her chest rose and fell it loosened a little more, coming closer to slipping off of her body.

June reached out and grabbed it by the knot, her fingers sliding against wet skin and the softness of the girl’s breast.

“Haley—”

“How long before they’re like that?” She broke the mannequin pose and grinned. “A week? A month?” Her eyes sparkled, grinning, not dim at all.

The weight in June’s stomach did a flip-flop and went someplace else.

“Don’t do that,” she let out a breath. “That’s not funny.”

“You’re not much of a morning person, are you?”

“It’s noon.”

She was still holding the towel to the girl’s breast. Haley seemed content to leave it there and stand there and grin.

“I can’t stop thinking about Christine. About all of them. Are there a lot? Out there in the city?”

“Towel?”

Haley slipped her hand under June’s and took the towel, then flitted past her and hopped onto the bed. The wrapping covered her the way a bumper sticker covers a car.

“All of them being protected by a guardian angel and they don’t even know it. For free! You’re like a superhero. You don’t even hang around to take credit.”

June opened her mouth and closed it. Being described as something between Batman and Mother Theresa was new. She usually thought of herself as something closer to Dracula.

“You’ve got an interesting way of looking at things,” she said.

“It’s a gift, to be that free.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s the one thing they’re not.”

“Yes they are.” The girl’s eyes were manic. She looked about to start jumping on the bed. “If they ever get worried or scared, they just reset and then they’re ok again. They can’t not be ok again. They can kick and scream all they want to—like children—but it’s going to set them right in the end.

“They can do or think whatever they want because if they cross a line, a boundary will stop them. That’s freedom.”

“You keep using that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means.”

But she made a kind of sense. She wondered if the girl was actually making sense or if she was just making sense because of the way she was sitting on the bed, with her legs folded beneath her, pink and damp from the shower.

“It was like... falling off of a building, expecting to die, then landing in a pile of feathers with no bottom that swallowed me up. They get that, free of charge, all the time.”

“Well.”

“You know you probably cured them of any anxiety or depression they might have had, without even meaning to? They can’t have a panic attack. Literally can’t. They’d go down.”

“Maybe, but—”

“I want that.” She wasn’t smiling.

And there it was. It had been on her face the night before, as she watched Christine come out of the bathroom and go about her business like nothing had happened. It hadn’t looked like fear because it wasn’t wasn’t fear—it was envy. And here it was.

“No.”

“Why not? You were going to when you met me, right? Why’d you stop?”

June looked at her. Her eyes were green and there were light freckles across her nose and her eyes were green and she had long eyelashes and her eyes were green.

“I changed my mind,” June said.

“Change it back.”

“No.”

“You owe me.”

June laughed. “You just pick random things to say sometimes, don’t you?”

“If you save someone’s life, it’s your responsibility for the rest of your own. That’s the saying. All I do is the same thing every day: go to work, come home, count my tips, once or twice a month fuck Bob so I can keep my apartment. And I’ll probably keep on doing that or something like it for the rest of my life. But you came along and plucked me out of it. Now you owe me.”

“I did you a favor, so now I owe you a favor?”

“That’s how the saying goes. It’s Chinese. You can’t argue with them.”

“Listen.” June sat on the bed next to her. Haley was getting the bedspread all damp. If most people had done that, she would have come close to physically throwing them off. She didn’t throw Haley off. “I want to tell you a story. I think maybe I gave you the impression that what I do is a public service or something. It’s not like that.”

“Oh, fun. I like your stories.”

“It’s not entertainment. I’m trying to make a point.”

“Ok. I promise not to be entertained.” She leaned back on her elbows. “But if you’re trying to scare me off, I gotta tell ya, you look about 115 pounds soaking wet and you’ve got tiny hands. You’re not scary.”

That’s fine, just listen.

This was a couple of months ago. It was in the bar in one of the hotels by the airport. When the weather’s bad, it’s the best place to find businesspeople with lots of time on their hands.

The weather was bad.

The hotel bar was thronged with stranded travelers, standing and sitting and looking miserable in business suits and jackets, thumbing useless tickets and watching the weather on the monitors. They watched the way people in sports bars watch football games.

June slunk through the crowd, a snake in grass.

Her turtleneck was the color of red wine and her hair was back in a ponytail: nothing fancy, just a ponytail. No earrings, no makeup. It was a look she’d always liked: it made her face look girlish and the rest of her look womanish. It caught people off guard when she finally spoke.

She scanned the crowd out of the corners of her eyes, looking for The Look. She didn’t have any better word for it than that. It was a kind of nameless need: maybe sexual, maybe spiritual, maybe just the loss of direction of a single day when things had slipped out of a person’s control in a way they were still trying to wrap their hands around, but hadn’t yet. It meant that, for whatever reason, they might be open to some light conversation with an intelligent, disarming young woman—and maybe a hand massage.

It didn’t take long.

A woman at a table off to the side glanced at her. She was maybe forty, business suit, shoulder-length black hair, drinking what looked like a gin and tonic. The suit was smart and expensive, her demeanor was confident; there was nothing needy about her, and for a moment, June second-guessed herself. She slowed, keeping her eyes pointed forward, observing only peripherally. The woman had to feel comfortable looking again. Being a voyeur, or thinking she was.

Right before June passed behind her the woman glanced again, and then she was sure.

The second look always came right then, because when a person has decided to look again they know that’s their last chance to do it in a casual way, without craning their neck. Little calculations, happening subconsciously, always. Eyes all over the room, making little moves—June absorbed them like a master chess player.

She approached the woman from behind, and as the woman raised her glass, June saw the clincher: a wedding ring.

Oh, my.

They might have been old friends chatting. They had a drink, then another.

When June took her hand, the woman—whose name turned out to be Candace—got a look on her face like someone being told a dirty joke that’s just out of their comfort range: embarrassed, but enjoying it. Not about to stop the show. She seemed to have de-aged by ten years. June took her arm and rolled her sleeve up without asking first, and Candace, bemused, let herself be handled. June massaged the arm with one hand: thumb on top, fingers on bottom, starting at the wrist and ending at the crook of the elbow. When she reached the elbow her hand lingered a moment, then began again at the wrist.

As she worked they talked about nothings. At first, Candace held up most of the conversation and June kept it going with gentle nudges—a question here, an “mmhmm” there, a laugh here—listening while her hands did their magic trick.

As time went on, June had to prompt her to continue more and more. Candace would start a sentence and it would trail off. June would remind her of what she was talking about. A minute later, Candace would trail off again.

And then, after some time, she trailed off and June didn’t prompt her to continue. The pause grew long—twenty seconds, thirty—and then June picked up the thread where Candace had left it. They swapped sides in the conversation seamlessly. She filled the space with nothings: talk about the weather, television, a book she’d read. Idle anecdotes like a grandfather might tell, out on the porch in the heat of the summer.

June stopped rubbing her arm and instead ran one finger up and down it, wrist to elbow to wrist. The touches were gentle but the rhythm was steady. Her other hand held Candace’s in her lap, the thumb pressed into the same soft spot it had found on Haley.

Her words began to match the caresses. At first it was only every fourth or fifth word, seemingly on accident. Then it was every second or third word. Then it was every word, one after the other, falling in time, matching the cadence of each touch.

Candace didn’t seem to notice. She was looking at the table like someone bored in church.

Then the words themselves changed, and June was no longer talking about the weather: she was talking about lying on the beach with her feet in the sand, listening to seagulls and the waves and feeling a breeze that always came just before the sun got too hot. She was talking about that moment when you know you’re about to drift off to sleep. She felt what the right thing to say was with the earthiness of a shaman, painting pictures, using the tension in the woman’s hand and the look on her face as her guide. They told her what Candace needed to hear.

As she spoke her hands were doing something else besides their expert caressing: they were feeling the woman’s pulse, and it was slowing. They were feeling the tension in the woman’s muscles, and it was gone.

Candace’s half-embarrassed smile had faded, replaced by a tired slackness: the look of someone staring out the window on a long bus ride. The expression didn’t seem to match the rest of her; everything else about her was sharp and precise, from the suit pants perfectly tailored to her hips to the way her dark hair framed her face, to her choice of words—when she spoke. Everything measured, except for the woman herself. She’d forgotten herself.

She was an expensive car with no driver.

Her eyelids began to droop.

June released the woman’s hand and the arm dropped into her lap as a dead weight. She felt along it, admiring its owner. There was a fullness about her upper body that was unique to women of her age; it wasn’t just her breasts, it was her shoulders and upper arms. She was fuller without being heavier. She filled out the shirt in a way a girl couldn’t. June liked the feel of her.

Her hand found the spot it was looking for: the soft place on the inside of the elbow. She applied pressure while her other hand kept up the steady strokes, never missing a beat, up and down on the sensitive skin of the wrist.

Candace blinked in slow motion, then again, and each time her eyes opened, they were less open than they had been before. Her head began to nod.

The fingers traveled up and down, up and down.

June was no longer describing any coherent scene, just a collection of thoughts and disjointed images of peace and darkness and letting go, and the only real thing they had in common was that they all ended with the word down. Candace’s slow-motion blinks began to appear in time with the word, and so did the dips of her head, as if each time she heard it, she were actually going down someplace, leaving her body behind, slipping through it like sand through a sieve.

And then it was as if her body began to anticipate the word, starting to sag a split second before it appeared, like one anticipates the last beat in a verse—

—then a full second before, her body reacting visibly to the words, a symphony following a conductor—

—until she started to sag right at the first word, having learned the music from the beginning to the end—and that last verse was like a song they played together, in perfect time, falling towards the crescendo—

—and when the final down came it was like it unplugged her, her eyes falling shut, her chin dropping against her chest, her shoulders slumping, and finally her entire body going limp as a piece of string trying to stand on its own as she sank away to a better place.

June had to move fast to keep her from spilling out of the chair like water that had lost its glass.

Their chairs were side by side—June had brought hers over as casually as she’d changed the direction of the conversation—and when she saw Candace let go and her body lose its rigidity, she moved.

The hand that had been massaging Candace’s elbow slid up, gripped her by the upper arm, and pulled her close. The other hand snaked around her waist in a hug, and June held the woman’s body against hers, keeping her from slithering to the floor.

She continued in hushed tones for a while longer, then her voice turned more conversational.

“Here.” She took Candace’s chin and raised her head. “Don’t want it to look like you’re takin a nap in the middle of a crowded restaurant. That’s just suspicious. I’m going to sit you up a little bit, and your body will stay just as I put it. Your eyes will open too, but it will stay dark, and you will keep going down.” When she said the word down, she ran a finger down the woman’s back, from her neck to the curve of her lower back. She repeated that twice, then continued the caresses without the word.

Candace’s eyes opened to slits.

June regarded her. The former grace and poise were all gone and she simply hung there, like a marionette, as she had been placed.

“Got kids, Candace?”

“Yes.” Mumbling.

“How many? Boys or girls?”

“Two girls.”

“Got a husband?”

“Yes.”

“That’s interesting, because the way you looked at me when I walked in is not the way happily married women usually look at other women.”

The finger slid down: neck to lower back.

“Weather’s pretty bad out there. Was your flight canceled? Is that why you’re here?”

“Yes.”

“Business trip?”

“Yes.”

“Where ya from?”

“Worcester.”

“Ouch. There’s no way you’re driving back home tonight. Highways are a mess, the pike’s at a standstill. You’d be on the road for hours. I think that if you rented a room and stayed here, then caught a flight in the morning, it’d be a business expense. It’d be the only safe, reasonable thing to do. You can’t drive home, can you?”

The woman shook her head in slow motion, swaying on invisible puppet strings.

Candace stood beside the bed, eyes closed, hands by her sides. Her shoulders were back, mimicking the poise June had seen in her when she’d walked into the hotel bar—but it was an illusion this time, a trick of the muscles: her body only did it because June had told it to.

June approached her from behind and whispered in her ear. Her eyes opened. The finger ran down her back: down. Her head nodded and her eyes closed.

June took her by the chin and did it again. The woman’s head raised, her eyes opened, the finger ran down her back, they closed.

Everything about her seemed designed to hide her curves: the dress slacks were a straight cut, so as to not show off her hips; the jacket, discarded on the floor, cut to hide her breasts and even the roundness of her shoulders. Only now, without it, did the shape of her show a little. Her shirt couldn’t hide the taper of her waist into her hips, and with her shoulders back, the material was pulled tight against the backs of her arms, up her sides, against the side of each breast.

June slid her hands around her waist and unbuttoned and unzipped the dress pants. Candace’s eyes rolled beneath the lids. The finger ran down her back. Quieting her.

She pulled Candace’s pants down to her ankles.

Goosebumps raised on the woman’s legs from the sudden exposure to air. She was wearing red panties that looked like something from Victoria’s Secret. June smiled and pulled them down too, then stood and pushed her face-first onto the bed. Candace flopped once and then settled, her bare lower half jiggling slightly with the motion. She lay still while June pulled off her shoes, then her pants, then her underwear.

The shoes and pants fell to the floor, but the underwear June kept in her hand as she climbed onto the bed. She straddled the prone woman, the insides of her legs brushing against the outside of Candace’s. Then—unceremoniously—she sat, letting her weight rest on the woman’s ass, feeling it between her legs. It was a strange sensation but a nice one. She wiggled around until she was comfortable, until her legs conformed perfectly to the body beneath her, like riding a horse bareback.

“This is comfy. Almost like this thing was designed to be sat on, right?”

Candace stirred, her head turning to the side on the sheets, but after a few minutes of gentle touches and whispers she became docile again. June calmed her like a rider soothing a startled horse. Then she pulled her arms behind her back and crossed them at the wrists, just above her ass.

“So, like I was saying, the way you looked at me when I walked in is not the way married women usually look at other women. It was the way a high school kid might look at an underwear ad.”

She pulled the panties into a tight line of fabric, forming something that resembled a short red rope, and wrapped it around Candace’s wrists in an X. Candace’s hands bobbed slightly as they were manipulated, her arms limp. Her fingers were curled in on themselves, ending in immaculately manicured nails.

“It’s like looking at pictures, isn’t it? Moving pictures. They do have a certain way of moving. I’m gonna go ahead and agree with you that women are nice to look at. But you don’t ever talk to them, right? Just look. I can tell you’re a watcher.”

She tied the red fabric into a knot, binding the wrists together.

“Until one day, one of them looked back and she liked the way you looked, too. You never really thought about that, I bet. That’s just bad self esteem. You’re hot! I’m guessing you’re about 40 but you look like 30. I’m not just saying that.”

She pulled the knot tighter. Candace’s mouth opened the tiniest bit, breathing into the sheets. One of her hands twitched.

June leaned down until her breasts were pressed against the woman’s back and her stomach was on the woman’s hands and her chin was on the woman’s shoulder and her lips were just behind the woman’s left ear, just touching the back of her earlobe.

“She stepped out of the picture and became real, and touched you and whispered things in your ear until you got confused, and then you were in a hotel room with your hands tied behind your back with your own underwear.”

Candace began to squirm. June pressed down against her hands, letting them feel her—making them feel her. They moved with dreamlike slowness against her stomach, hesitant, as if feeling something for the first time.

“What did you like about me, that made you look at me like that?” She snaked a hand around the dress shirt, then under, and began to rub the skin beneath.

Candace breathed but didn’t answer.

“You’re naked from the waist down and tied up. This is no time for pride.”

The faintest whisper, the faintest movement of the lips: your legs.

June clamped her thighs down in a sudden and violent grip. A tremble ran through Candace’s body. Her lips dragged on the sheet, leaving a trail of lipstick.

“Those are my legs.” Her hand crept lower, her fingers playing in the dark bush. Candace’s head turned in dreamlike, underwater motion, her face pressed against the sheets.

“I’m all of those girls. We were tired of just being looked at so we took you to a hotel room so we could find out what you felt like under all of those fancy clothes.” Her fingers teased. Candace’s hips arched upwards. June pushed her back down, flattening her against the bed. Candace moaned. One of her hands grabbed a handful of June’s turtleneck and balled into a fist, pulling.

“We think you feel nice.”

June ran a hand up and let it get tangled in the dark hair, tugged just enough to not hurt, just enough to produce a startled gasp. Then she let go and took hold of the red silk bindings. She pulled them tighter, kept the pressure on. In front her fingers rubbed, rubbed. Candace made little mewling sounds.

“I want you to think about your hands, and the fact that that’s your own underwear tied around them.” Her fingers darted upwards; the woman’s body made a little jerk that trailed off into a quiver; June held her tight. “You made it happen by thinking about it. If you hadn’t gone into a trance and come up here on your own, I would have tossed you over my shoulder and brought you here by force, like a caveman. Because tonight has been written in your life for years.”

Candace’s body arched upwards again; June used her hips and legs to push her back down. The woman did it again. She didn’t seem to be able to help it. June flattened her out again, harder, gripping the writhing body between her thighs. Each time a little half gasp, almost a chirp, would leave the woman’s lips, like it was being squeezed out of her, like a child’s toy. Then June’s fingers would rub and her hips would arch—

It was like a dance. They repeated it, again and again. It became more violent.

When Candace started to shake June flattened her out again, holding her against the hand that was doing its little magic tricks, and kept holding on until the shaking stopped and Candace seemed seemed to melt, her hands going slack.

June stroked her hair and whispered things in her ear. After a little while she untied her and guided her up towards the pillow, then lay behind her, spooning.

The sound of whispering filled the room again, a low and ambient undertone, and continued for the rest of the night.

She finished and watched Haley’s reaction. She’d picked a story that was shocking to show the girl the reality, the nuts and bolts of it. She wanted to show her how it wasn’t all nice dreams of shade in the summertime—sometimes, it was very much like a furry creature being snatched up and overpowered in the wild. An antelope being taken down by a lion.

Haley looked at her. “And?”

“That’s it.” She suddenly felt stupid. Haley didn’t look shocked—she looked bored. “You didn’t think that was... harsh?”

“What are you, Winnie the Pooh? That hardly even qualifies as softcore porn.”

“Oh.” It had felt harsh to her. It had seemed like something large, almost brutal, at the time.

Haley stood and looked down at her. She was still wearing just the towel but was dry now, except for her hair.

“So that’s settled. Make me like them. You won’t even have to tackle me.”

“Didn’t we just have this conversation? Were you listening?”

“Do it.”

“No.”

“Do it or I’ll kick your ass.”

Or maybe she’d gotten the wildlife analogy after all.

June laughed. “What?” She stood up. Haley put her hands up like a boxer.

“You heard me. Do it or imma whoop ya.”

“I know you think you’re being funny, but—”

Haley’s right hand darted out, lightning quick, patted June on the cheek, then was back next to the other in the boxer pose almost before June had seen the movement.

“I’m not being funny,” Haley said. “Put em up.” The hand darted out again, touching June’s other cheek.

“Cut it out.”

“What ya gonna do, writer-lady? Type me to death? I bet you fight like a girl.” The hand shot out again, and this time, it wasn’t a gentle pat: it was an open-handed slap at half-strength. June swatted but it was gone by the time her arm was up. Too fast, the girl was too fast.

June had the sudden, stark realization that she’d never been in a real fight. Spats in the schoolyard when she was younger, yes, but never serious and never alone, as an adult, with no one to intervene, with only her and her hands to determine the outcome.

Following that, she realized that Haley had. It was all over her movements. It was in her posture—which bordered on careless, despite how fast she was—and in the way she never dropped her shoulder before she swung. The girl had lived a different life.

Following that, June had the sudden certainty that if it ever came down to it, Haley would win.

Following that, she realized that she did not know this girl at all, knew almost nothing about her other than her hair color and occupation.

But none of those thoughts showed on June’s face, because June was another kind of animal.

“I said cut it out,” she deadpanned.

“Type type type!” The hand shot out again. Knuckles brushed her cheek. The blow glanced off the side but grazed her enough to sting and maybe even leave a mark.

She seized Haley by the wrist and twisted, wrenching her arm around to her lower back and pinning it there. She felt the tension go out of it as she did. The girl had let her do it. That knowledge made her twist a little harder. Haley winced then tried to pretend she hadn’t.

The action had pulled them together at the waist like Tango dancers, and they now stood eye to eye.

“Are you done yet?” June stared at her.

“Sure.” Her other hand came up and, weakly, slapped at June’s other cheek. June seized that wrist too, twisted it around, not gently. It pulled them both off balance and for a moment they stood, toe to toe, tottering. Then the bed came against the backs of June’s knees and they went down, Haley on top, her wrists still pinned to the small of her back.

They bounced once, rocking the bed. Haley’s towel fell open, exposing her left side to the air. Neither of them noticed.

They looked at each other, breathing.

“Ok,” June said. “Ok. But it’s not going to work right now. Not with your heart going a mile a minute.”

“How do you know how my heart is going?”

“I can feel it.” And she could. Their chests were pressed together. “It won’t work until you chill out a bit. Take some deep breaths.”

“Ok.”

“And stop squirming.”

“I’m not squirming.”

“Breathe.”

“Ok.” She did. Her chest rose and fell against June’s. From the outside it seemed an odd way to have a conversation—one lying atop the other with her hands pinned behind her own back—but neither of them noticed. They slipped back into normal speaking tones. “Earlier, I thought I might almost be able to do it on my own, just from thinking about it. I tried in the shower. It didn’t work. For a minute though, I think it... almost did.”

“Don’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because who knows what weird ideas you’ll give yourself if you’re on your own. You’ve got weird enough ideas as it is.”

“How would you stop me?” She smirked. “Unless you make me like Christine, which is what I’ve been asking you to do.”

“Ok. I will.”

Haley yawned. June’s hands had started to work their magic.

“No you won’t,” Haley said. “I’ll drift off and then come back and you won’t have done it, just like before.” She rested her chin on June’s shoulder and sighed.

“That’s right.”

Ten minutes later they were still laying like that, but Haley had long since stopped speaking. June looked at her. She was naked up one side where the towel had fallen open, but it was magazine-naked: side of the leg, hip, side of the breast. June rolled her onto her back and sat up.

You shouldn’t look.

She grabbed the blanket and pulled it over the girl quickly. She’d looked. Her knees felt wobbly for a minute.

She called a cab.

Outside, the cab went in the opposite direction of her stranded car.

She got out at a large office building downtown and took the elevator to the sixth floor.

Everything up there was made of leather, black polished marble, and some kind of dark wood with reddish undertones. There was a long leather couch against one wall and a painting of what appeared to be Boston Common during autumn above it. A reception booth dominated the far side of the room with the name of the company in large gold letters on the front of it. The receptionist was out to lunch; the office was silent.

June walked down a hall to a corner office. There were bronze plates on all of the doors with names on them; the one on the corner office said CANDACE BIANCHI, C.L.O. June let herself in.

Candace was behind an enormous desk made of the same red wood and black marble, and was sitting in a chair made of the same leather. Same smart business suit as always, smart hair done in precise waves and curls, smart makeup. She looked sharp and beautiful, borderline intimidating. She stood up when June entered.

“Can I help you?” A polite smile. Professional. She offered her hand.

“I think you can.” June walked around the desk and took the offered hand between both of hers, looking her in the eye. She held it a beat too long, until the polite smile began to turn puzzled, before continuing. “Have you been practicing, Candace?”

The woman’s face fell in slow motion. Her eyes widened, and something like recognition flashed across her face. She took a step back. Her free hand reached for the phone and the button that would call security.

“Shh. No, no.” June stepped in quickly and embraced her in a half hug: one hand snaked up her back and found its way under the mane of dark hair to the nape of her neck; the other touched her cheek, just in front of the ear. “You don’t want to do that.”

Candace stiffened. Her hand hovered over the button. Her eyes had become almost comically wide, deer-in-the-headlights wide. The expression looked out of place on her face; it looked like it belonged on someone who was currently falling out of a window, not on this sleek, composed woman.

“What would you tell them?” June trailed her finger down her back, between her shoulder blades. “That a woman came into your office and said something that made you feel strange?” The finger ran down, down, past the small of her back to the curve of her ass. “That she touched you in a way that made you feel like you were falling down into yourself? That seems like a strange thing to tell security.”

Candace’s hand began to shake, an inch above the button.

“I mean, I’ve never worked in security,” June traced a line along her jaw, ear to chin, “but it just seems like if a woman called me up and said something like that, I’d think it was strange.”

Candace seemed to vibrate with effort. Her head was tilted back slightly, as if something cold had crept up her neck. The finger began its trip down her back again. The hand tightened on her jaw. She swayed.

“Put your hand down, Candace.” June turned the woman’s head so they were eye to eye, noses almost touching. “Put it down. Now.”

The word now seemed to run through her. It was just one syllable but it had finality. There was no way to be coy with such a brief, clear order.

Candace seemed to wilt.

Her hand dropped to her side and she let out the breath she’d been holding since June had taken her hand. Her eyelids dropped to half mast, but beneath them, the dark eyes stayed focused on June’s. Her body went from rigid to pliable: she seemed to de-age into a sapling, soft and bendable.

June began the caresses and whispers that would quiet her further: a series of motions that, over the months, had been tailored to this precise, professional woman.

Every horse had its own startling point and its own soft spot that would calm it.

“That’s a little more fight than I like in my girls,” she said in an undertone. Her fingers ran down the woman’s neck, ear to collar bone. “I understand. You’re at work. Here, you’re Superwoman. You have to be. I understand that.” She took Candace’s head in her hands and held it firmly. “But you are never Superwoman around me. Not ever. Come here. I just came to talk, since you’re such a good listener when you’re like this, but we can do both.”

She led Candace around the desk and stood her beside it, facing the door, and stood behind her. Her hands touched the woman’s body in different places, in complicated rhythms: back of the shoulder, side of the hip, reaching around to touch her just below the breast bone. Then they dropped to the waistband of her pants, wrists resting on her hips.

“Look at the door.” The hands unbuttoned the pants and played with the zipper. It zipped down a little bit, up a little bit, then down all the way. June gripped the dress slacks by the waistband. “It could open at any time.”

It was a lie. She’d locked the door when she came in.

But there was still a startled intake of breath from the woman, and June picked that moment to pull the slacks down about six inches in a quick and violent motion like tearing off a bandaid, just far enough to expose her ass and upper legs. It provoked another hissing gasp. Candace tried to back away from the door. June held her still.

“See, this is nice. Not complicated. That’s what I like about it. It’s black and white. I say do and you do.”

She ran one hand up and down the woman’s stomach while the other found its way into her underwear. It looked like Victoria’s Secret again, silver this time. There were little looping frills that hugged the shape of her.

“I could have you walk out into the office naked and say ‘Hi, my name is Candace and I have no idea why I’m not wearing any pants’, and you would like it.”

A little noise escaped Candace’s lips.

“When your boss walked up you’d just squelch and ask him to please, please slap your ass, just once. And when security came and grabbed you by the arms, you’d fight them and force them to handle you roughly, just to feel it. You’d force them to pin you down, then thrash around on the floor.”

As she spoke she slid one finger up into the woman’s heat. Slowly. Candace took shallow breaths, like someone in pain.

“Imagine it. Imagine opening the door and walking out right now.”

Candace’s eyes rolled up. She shuddered. Her ass ground back against June, hot and restless. June took her by the chin and pulled her head back so that her face was pointed at the ceiling and their cheeks pressed together, and whispered,

“The door’s opening, Candace.”

Candace’s legs wobbled then buckled. She went down, her legs folding into an awkward position beneath her: feet out, knees together. June went down with her, kneeling behind her, leaning her back so that she didn’t collapse. Candace’s head tilted back and rested on her shoulder, eyes barely slits. June whispered nothings, calming her.

When Candace had stopped panting, she went on.

“So, this is a good example of what I came down to talk about. I’ve been puzzling over something and this is the perfect illustration of it.

“If we liked each other as, you know, friends, I don’t know that I’d be able to do this. I mean, you like it—or you do right now, anyway, I can feel that much—” She smiled and the woman’s hips made an involuntary jerk (which was, often, the only way Candace was able to respond; or it might have been because June tended to punctuate her sentences with a caress; she wasn’t sure). “—but I mean, like each other as people. It requires a certain strictness on my part. We are not equals.

“My girls need to know that I could march them out into that office naked. It needs to be unquestioning. Even if they do get a little startled at first. That’s ok, we’ll work on that. You don’t blame a dog for getting spooked at the wind, right? But in the end, it has to be unquestioning, and that’s not how equals are. And if you liked someone, you’d want to stay equals, right?

“I just can’t think of any way around it, how to have it both ways. Can you?”

Candace didn’t give any indication that she could. Her body seemed to have turned to Jello in between shivers. June realized that she had been teasing her as she talked, rubbing idly like one does with a worry stone when they’re thinking. She smiled at herself, at the both of them, and kept doing it.

They sat like that for a little while, with June stroking Candace’s hair, her arms, other parts of her.

“Anyway. Good talk. I needed this. I was feeling off balance for a while there.” She stood. “Time to get up. Up up up!” She helped Candace stagger to her feet, fixed her pants and hair, then guided her to her chair. Candace dropped into it heavily.

“I’m going to lock the door behind me when I go. You’re going to remember locking it yourself earlier because you wanted some privacy. You’re going to sit here for about fifteen minutes, just relaxing and imagining your coin, flipping over and over. What does the coin say?”

“That I’m being controlled,” Candace whispered. Her voice sounded small, not like her.

“What does the other side say?”

“I—it’s...” Her brow furrowed. “It’s blurry.”

“That’s all right. Watch it until both sides become clear.”

Candace sighed, her head settling into the plush cushion. June leaned down and kissed her neck. It smelled of expensive perfume.

“Anyone around here ever call you Candy?” she said into the skin.

“Only once.” A sighing, slurred mumble.

June smiled against her ear.

“Good girl.”

She patted Haley’s cheek. She patted the side, back by the ear, because slapping freckles seemed wrong.

Haley yawned and opened her eyes. She looked around.

“Huh,” she said. “I don’t feel any different. I just feel like I took a nap.” She looked at her arm, as if it might look different.

“You did just take a nap.”

“That’s a dirty trick.”

“Come on. We have to get our cars before they get towed.” She turned away quickly because Haley was sitting up and the blanket was falling away.

“Oh, hey! My boobs. Hi.”

“Take whatever you want to wear,” June said over her shoulder. She went to the kitchen and tried not to think about how, once you’ve seen someone naked, it’s easy to picture them naked all the time.

“Turtleneck, turtleneck, turtleneck,” Haley called from the bedroom. “Do you own anything else?”

“Turtleneck sweaters.”

“Anything else? I don’t want to stretch anything nice out.”

June opened her mouth with a comeback, then thought no, that’s accurate.

They walked up the frozen street, staying as close to the bank as they could, sometimes wading up into it when a plow or something else large came by. The sky was a steel gray, but it was that kind of gray that only happens during or after a snow storm in the daytime, where everything is weirdly illuminated despite the lack of light. June liked the quiet.

“So where can I read your articles? Your paper’s website keep an archive?” Haley broke it.

“Can we talk about something besides my job?”

Haley made a half-circle to face her. “It’s just weird that you have a job that’s basically talking to people then writing it down. You don’t seem the type. Journalists have to be like half politician, right? You don’t seem like that.” She walked backwards to stay face-to-face with June as she talked, her shoes crunching in the snow.

June walked faster. Haley walked backwards faster.

“I know. You’re planning to be a real writer some day, right? And you need this to pad your resume,” she went on.

“Haley. Aren’t you worried you’re going to trip and fall or walk into something?”

“You’d tell me.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. You’re noahgh!“ She tripped over a large chunk of ice that had been thrown up by a plow and landed on her ass, scraping the palm of her hand. “Ow.”

“Shit. Are you ok?” June kneeled down.

“Yeah.” Haley looked at her hand. Blood began to form in the cut, thick and red.

“I’m sorry. I thought that would be funnier.”

“Funny hurts less.”

June helped her up. “That was an asshole thing to do, I’m sorry. But I’m just trying to show you that you shouldn’t go around trusting people that you don’t even—”

Haley grinned and began walking backwards again.

“Stop that.” June followed her.

“No.”

“You’re going to hurt yourself again.”

“You won’t let me.”

“I will, because what crazy waitresses do with their bodies is none of my business.”

“Ok.” She broke into a jog, backwards up the street.

“Slow down. Haley—” June chased her. “Go left. You’re going to run into that car.”

“Your left or my left?”

“My left!“

Haley went left, missing a Honda idling in the street by about six inches.

“Stop. There’s an intersection.”

“Guess you better go see if any cars are coming.” She grinned again, speeding up.

“I’m serious. Stop.”

“Better hurry!”

The intersection was twenty feet ahead and with a busier street. A car passed through it as June watched. It was going at a good clip. There was no way anyone on that road could see them coming over the snow bank, and no way they could stop in time even if they did.

Ten feet.

June ran and tackled her.

They did a half-spin in the air as they flew towards the bank, and when they landed, they’d turned enough that June ended up mostly on the bottom. She sank into the snow with Haley on top of her. The girl always seemed to end up on top.

They looked at each other, their breath making little clouds. They were covered with snow—it was in their hair, their eyebrows, their shoes—and half buried.

“See?” Haley beamed.

June opened her mouth to say something and Haley kissed her.

She was so shocked that her head jerked back into the snow, making a dent within the June-shaped dent that was there already.

Haley held on. Her eyes were closed; there were snowflakes in her eyelashes. Her lips were warm. Everything else was a wilderness of snow, ice, wind, cold, gray, gray, light-gray and gray.

For the second time that day, June failed to retrieve her lost car.