I knew the significance of the gesture. Right then, with her hand outstretched, time slowed down in that strange way that it sometimes does, and I could use my gifts to lead her, by following.

On the surface, it was only the joining of hands, but then Michelangelo chose nothing less than the touch of two hands to represent the creation of all mankind. To reach out would be a monumental signal, perhaps even a promise, that we were going forward together, two conspirators dancing to our own private tune.

I extended my hand, my cock hard and pulsing in my pants. When our fingers interlocked, I could feel the tension in Mira’s body, and hear her breath catch, and see the fear in her eyes. She really didn’t believe that she could do this, and yet there we were, pulling each other closer, the world gone noticeably silent as our pasts and this present moment coalesced, gaining weight, creating a future with gravity, a future with an inescapable pull. She smelled wonderful, herbal shampoo and lilac body wash intermingling with sexual excitement in the air. Her lips trembled as she tilted her head, and she sighed when our mouths met, that one small sound expressing all of the contradictions tearing at her from within.

We kissed, our tongues touching lightly. My right hand found a perfect resting spot on the small of her back, and I pressed, just hard enough that we grazed each other at the front, her hard nipples evident. Mira moaned, a moan so anguished that I eased up, allowing her to regroup. She broke off the kiss, both hands going to the side of her face, her eyes wide, her cheeks flushed red. Her entire body seemed to experience a sudden shiver, goosebumps appearing on her bare arms.

“Oh God, I can’t…” she began, momentarily faltering from the shock of it all. “You can’t ever let anyone know that you just kissed Taylor Cassidy’s wife!”

“I’ll never tell a soul,” I answered, my tone of voice solid and calm.

“I know I’m beautiful,” she whispered. “Tell me… I need to know that it’s more than that.”

“It’s more, Mira. You know that.”

“But you love my body, and you want to… to…”

“How could I not?”

She reached down, picking up the handbag that she’d dropped upon entering my office. “I… I can’t do this, Michael,” she whispered. “I’m… so sorry…”

I kept silent, allowing this part of her to say its piece.

“I’m just not strong enough,” she went on.

“I understand.”

“It’s cheating! I can’t… I can’t be like that. I don’t think I could live with myself.”

“You don’t need to say another word, Mira. We’ll just go on with our lives.”

Her eyes flashed at that one, her expression simultaneously fearful and defiant. Her right hand sought out the doorknob behind her, feeling in the air a good foot from where it actually was. She didn’t break eye contact, and I smiled inside, aware. She was afraid to look away or turn her body, because a fantasy had formed inside, probably something where she lost sight of me for a moment and I pounced, pushing her back against the wall and kissing her again, this time forcefully, my hands groping, my hard cock pressing into her.

“Ohhhmmm…” she groaned, as though feeling the thoughts as real. Her eyelids fluttered and her hand changed direction, reaching forward and staying low. Her fingertips met my belt buckle first, and then slipped down. The touch was light, barely there, but then her fingers swirled and pressed, gathering the impression of my cock, as hard as it could be in my pants.

Her mouth dropped open and her eyes went wide, panic-filled. “Oh God what am I doing?” she exhaled, turning her head to locate the doorknob. With one swift and fluid motion, she pivoted and opened the door, her skirt fanning up and out, briefly exposing her upper thighs. With steps somewhere between a brisk walk and outright running, she fled through the reception space, and out into the sunlight.

Two obvious questions arise here. The first: Why didn’t I do more to get her hands inside of my pants? And the second, even more obvious if you saw the woman, would be: Why me? How was it that I even had a chance?

It all might have been over, almost before beginning, because she had undoubtedly gotten this close to others before, only to run and never return. The influence I had was subtle, perhaps even fragile; still, we were inching closer, and it wasn’t happening all by itself. “Control” is too strong a word, but even so, I had significant tricks up my sleeve.

I call it the art of following, which I know sounds pretentious. The funny thing is that I never would have thought of the term if not for Mira. On one level, it’s nothing more than tuning in, and staying tuned in, following the signals being given off by the person in front of you. There are no psychic powers involved — hell, you could do it, too, only it’s much harder to pull off than you’d think. We’re all intuitive to some degree or another; everybody can pick up “invisible” clues from friends and lovers. Following is like that, only I’m speaking about achieving and maintaining a high level of focus, almost like meditating with the eyes and other senses wide open. This is where ordinary intuition falls behind, because one stray thought or momentary daydream can be costly. There is so much to discover if one can only see it, but it’s so easy to become distracted, missing subterranean patterns that often indicate repressed fears and desires.

It doesn’t hurt that I’m a psychologist. Paying attention and searching for unconscious tendencies are vital to my profession. I almost always see soft spots in the psyches of those I meet, in the same way that dentists see all kinds of issues with their friends’ teeth. The fault-lines in Mira’s psyche weren’t terribly deep, but with careful attention I’d found certain issues to stimulate, and others to soothe. And the really funny thing? I never would have thought to exploit her psychological makeup at all, not if she hadn’t shown me that following had other meanings, with more exciting possibilities.

What I’m speaking about now is different. It uses the observational and intuitive properties that I’ve already described, but takes them further. It’s the playing of a certain mindgame, complete with clear rules, including the key rule that the game itself must remain largely invisible. Without ever speaking of it, we placed ourselves within this game almost from the beginning, two players making their subtle moves, creating a dynamic that could subvert Mira’s fears and hesitations, allowing — or perhaps causing — sex to become a fait accompli.

One other rule of the game? Total honesty, only it isn’t really, because it’s honesty with multiple layers of deception lying underneath. If this is confusing, don’t worry — you’ll understand as I tell my tale. For now, the best way I can think to describe this dishonest honesty is by recounting an enlightening game of chess that I played while traveling in France several years ago. My opponent, an Israeli staying in the same hotel, warned me as the game began that I must, above all else, keep my eyes on his knights.

“Why?” I asked, smelling some deceit.

“Because I will destroy you with them,” he answered, coldly smiling.

And he did. He told me, completely truthfully, where to look for danger. And then, helpless to prevent it, I watched in horror as his knights danced about the board, stymieing my attacks and picking off my pieces one by one.

I gave Mira a similar warning. I told her what to expect from me, and how I could be trusted, and where I couldn’t be trusted at all. And now, with one illicit kiss and her first tentative contact with my aching cock, I could see her helplessness unfolding right in front of me, her desires beginning to overwhelm her fears. And I was definitely ready to go for more.

We’d met quite innocently three weeks before, at a series of ballroom dancing workshops. I’m not a dancer, believe me, and only attended the classes as a favor to an actress friend, Grace, who needed to brush up on her dancing skills for a role in a play. And actually, it’s not quite right to say that I met Mira at that class, as I never spoke to her that first night, only saw her. It was one of those moments where you catch a glimpse of someone in your peripheral vision, and have to bring all the senses to bear on the fleeting impression, to check whether it could be real or not.

I turned my head and stared for as long as I thought I could get away with. She was real. The woman was flat-out gorgeous, with Holy Shit! legs that literally made me shake my head. The dance hall was big, and although I never got close enough to her that night to take a good long look, I could feel her, and feel that others were also aware of her in a special way. I wasn’t the only one who had noticed the presence of a world-class beauty in the room.

And then, at the very next class, I was introduced to Mira and her husband, Taylor, by Grace. We all chitchatted during a break, and I learned then what had been obvious to the eyes from moment one, that Mira was a professional dancer. She was only coming to the classes to help her “double left-footed” husband to learn a few steps.

I was cool and pleasant on the surface. I even had a little conversation with Taylor about his work as a surgeon. Underneath, however, I was reeling, because Mira Cassidy possessed some combination of cuteness/gorgeousness that sliced through me like one of her husband’s scalpels. Up close, I absorbed the dynamic details of her body, the fiery green eyes and alluring smile, the strong neck, the breasts that looked just right and the legs that looked too good to be true.

In a flash, I saw this woman in my mind’s eye, her body set off by a revolving array of sexy garments, her eyes and mouth expressing the delights of sex. My heart beating wildly, the scientist in me wanted to see Mira naked, for the purpose of dissecting the combination of factors that stimulated my imagination so unexpectedly and forcefully. The rest of me, of course, just wanted to fuck her.

I’m not in the habit of lusting after other men’s wives, and so I tried not to think about her too much, and almost succeeded. We might have gotten no closer if Mira hadn’t come to the special waltz class the next week, wearing a sleeveless black dress that highlighted every curve of her incredible body. She was absolutely breathtaking, but even more importantly, she had no husband at her side.

She came right up to me, her eyes bright and alive, every inch of her sending out sexy flirty energy.

“Where is Taylor?” I asked.

“At home with the flu.”

“Doctors get sick?”

“Don’t tell anyone,” she laughed. “I should probably be at home, but I had too much fun last week. By the way, where is Grace?”

“Out in the hall, with a… potential suitor,” I replied.

“You’ve been ditched?”

“Apparently.”

“And why aren’t you doing something about it? Grace is hot, and you two go so well together.”

It was one of those times when you don’t know whether to speak the truth or not. “We’re just friends. Grace used to be one of my clients,” I said, revealing only a little. If Mira didn’t know that Grace was gay, maybe somebody wanted things that way.

“Clients?”

“I’m a therapist. It’s actually how Grace and I met.”

“Oh. And a therapist and a patient can’t… "

"Former patient."

"Even so, I can see how there could be power issues in something like that.”

“Exactly.”

“So good! Since you’re unattached, may I have the first dance?”

“I’d be delighted,” I replied.

The first dance was really more of a “how-to for dummies” thing, with me being one of the waltz dummies. I was certain that Mira could pair up with our instructor and dance golden rings around the room, but instead she listened attentively, and encouraged me with my first faltering steps.

“You have to lead me,” she directed, once I started to get the hang of it. “How much we move and how we turn is all up to you. I just follow.”

“But you’re the one who knows what to do,” I objected.

“Don’t be afraid,” she assured me. “I’m a great follower.”

It was electrifying, moving together with my hands on her body, locking eyes as the instructor insisted. After only a few minutes, I had the rudimentary rhythm down and more or less knew where my feet should go, and I could twirl us around some, too. Not bad, you might be thinking, but it was only possible because of the strange dynamic that became evident. Mira was following, just as she had said, only she was following so perfectly that she was, in truth, leading. Perhaps an observer would have believed the mirage, and complemented me on my rapid success. I wasn’t fooled, though. I recognized the dynamic, because it’s at the very heart of my practice as a therapist.

And this is where I first came to think of the subtle deceptions to come as “following”. Clients are often fearful of unlocking certain closed doors within themselves, often with good reason. With many, you can lead them right to these doors, and slowly, carefully, help them to open them, freeing the psychic energy trapped inside. Not every client is strong or stable enough to go through this, however, and enough fears gather together to create an almost unbreakable resistance. When little or no progress can be made without confronting this difficult material, yet the client is helpless to open the doors, it becomes my responsibility to create an illusion, a calming sense that it is the client choosing to instigate the direction. It’s all about mitigating fear with the perception of control, or being in control. When the client believes that they are in control, they accept my probing, and even the resulting psychological pain, because they begin to believe that they are craving it, rather than resisting it.

It’s all very underhanded, but always with the benefit of the client in mind. But that night on the dance floor, I suddenly understood that there might be new ways to exploit this dynamic. Mira was creating a similar illusion, only in a physical sense. It felt like I was choosing our direction. It felt like I was directing our tempo. It felt like I was the one controlling how we danced. But I was not in control, and Mira knew exactly what she was doing.

Curious, I made an attempt at actually leading her, dictating rather than responding. She felt the change, and made a funny face as the flow of our steps became more labored, our bodies no longer moving as one.

“Leading doesn’t mean refusing to cooperate,” she whispered in my ear.

A few minutes later, all of we novices got to a point of relative familiarity with the steps, to the point that the instructor insisted we switch partners, to freshen things up. I was only mildly surprised when, without a word or even a meaningful glance, Mira stood completely still, making no move to change.

“I can feel how much you’re helping me,” I said under my breath. “Maybe someone else deserves the benefit of your expertise.”

“You’d be a disaster without me,” she whispered back. “I’m saving some woman’s feet by staying right here.”

That was how the night went, all very innocent and light on the surface, but she felt different in my arms from then on, like we had both recognized the possibilities, becoming silent co-conspirators. I danced with other women most of the night, only twice reuniting with Mira for a waltz, but I always knew where she was. I sometimes caught glimpses of her across the room, and when she was partnered with a more experienced dancer, she could twirl energetically, the bottom of her knee-length dress flying out to reveal the splendor of her legs and even her black panties. I couldn’t help feeling that the leg show was at least partly for me, and that the entire night had become about us, even though it made no logical sense.

And during our last dance together that night, a more up-tempo waltz that I would have tanked on with any other partner, our hips ended up pressed together at one point, just to that degree of wondering whether either of us, or even both of us, were doing it deliberately.

“You made headway with that cute redhead?” I asked Grace over lunch a few days later.

“Headways, tailways, sideways… Yes. Her name is Tina. Tina the Screama’, I’ve already dubbed her. Good lungs and exceptionally creamy thighs, what more could a girl ask for?”

“Congratulations.”

“Piece of cake,” she responded. “Speaking of thighs I’d love to lick, Mira Cassidy was asking all kinds of questions about you after last Saturday’s dance.”

“I told her that I used to be your shrink,” I said. “I hope that was okay.”

“I’ll forgive you if you get her on your couch and hypnotize her into going bi.”

“No offense to your considerable charms, but I’m not that persuasive, Grace.”

“Don’t sell yourself short. Two years of working with you made me perfect, didn’t it? Plus you have a quiet intensity that’s almost scary. Sometimes I think you could hard-boil an egg if you stared at it and concentrated hard enough.”

“I’ll remember that one at my nephew’s next birthday party.”

”God, that woman has thighs and calves of steel!” she suddenly exploded. “Did you see her panties when she spun the bottom of her dress up to her tits?”

“I saw.”

“Half the dance hall had a hard-on. Hell, I had a hard-on. I think I’d sell my body on the street if it somehow got my head between those legs.”

“Now, now…”

“I can’t help it. I sense a pussy aching with unmet needs, and I’m such a humanitarian. Only I fear she’s about as straight as they come.”

“She’s also a married woman, Grace.”

“Not a happily married one, methinks.”

“You know this?”

“I feel it. She and Taylor are like perfect Barbie and Ken dolls on the surface, but I sense trouble brewing in BarbieLand.”

“That’s none of our business,” I said. “Unless she really did end up on my couch.”

Grace shot a wicked smile at that one. “I’ll bet you’d like that just as much as I would. I always thought your couch was unnecessarily plush.”

“You have a dirty mind,” I said.

“You wouldn’t fuck her if she came on to you?”

“Not if she was my patient, and married. That’s two firm strikes.”

“She’s firm, alright. But I don’t believe you. She may be married, but you aren’t. You don’t even have a serious relationship going just now. How long has it been since you and Joyce broke up?”

“Four months.”

“With nary a fling since.”

I didn’t answer.

“Four months without a good honest fuck. You poor man. I think you’re fooling yourself about your resolve. If a woman like Mira Cassidy thrust her slit in your face, your tongue would start vibrating.”

“You’ve become such a poet, Grace. But why are we even talking about things that will never happen?”

She gave me an odd smile. “I honestly don’t know. It just feels relevant somehow.”

I didn’t go to the next dance, because I was in New York for a conference. When I returned home late on Sunday night, there were several messages waiting for me, and one of them was from Mira.

“We missed you at the dance Saturday night,” she spoke softly on my machine, adding that she hoped I’d be at the next one.

I popped a cold beer and sat in the rocking chair in my living room, replaying her message three times. It began as “we”, as in we missed you. But then, I noticed, the “we” slipped into an “I”. I hope you’ll be at the next one. And while not over the top, something about her tone of voice contained a flirtatious edginess.

Exhausted from the trip, I closed my eyes and felt my dick grow in my pants. I’d never given her my phone number. Grace? Or did Mira sleuth it out all by herself?

My mind wandered, and without half trying, I could hear so many desirable sentences spoken in that tone of voice: You love the way these stockings feel on my legs, don’t you? I really missed your cock. I need to fuck you. Please, please let me fuck you.

Unzipping my pants, I pressed the repeat button again. Grace was right. I wouldn’t be able to resist a woman like that if my life depended on it.

I accompanied Grace to the next dance class. She and the redheaded screamer hooked up and promptly disappeared, probably for some wet-on- wet action in the women’s room, or even a hall closet.

Mira was there with Taylor, and I didn’t like the way he was looking at me. They greeted me before things got going and Mira was too happy to see me, in a way that her husband couldn’t miss. I retreated as fast as I could, wondering whether I was in danger of becoming some sort of tool, Mira either feigning or flaunting an attraction towards me as a way to slap Taylor’s ego around.

I danced with Mira only once, and felt a disquieting rightness in the way our bodies fit together. We locked eyes as we were supposed to, and her expression began to alternate, subtly, between fear and fire.

“I want to talk to you sometime,” she suddenly whispered into my ear.

“During the break tonight?”

“No, not here. Alone. It’s… I’m not asking you to be my therapist, but I think I could use some perspective from someone like you.

“This is about…”

“I’ll tell you later. Should I come to your office? Do you have openings?”

“I keep Wednesdays free, to write reports and that kind of thing. But maybe my office would be too official. No therapist/client overtones, just… friends.”

“Coffee, then. Wednesday morning.”

I agreed, and made it a point to steer clear of Mira the rest of the night. My dick got too excited when I was near her, and I could feel a nasty vibe emanating from hubby all the way across the room.

“I think you have a new enemy,” Grace smirked, when we finally danced.

“I think you need to wash your hands,” I answered.

“They smell like pussy, don’t they?” she laughed.

“Yep.”

“And now yours do, too.”

“I guess that’s true.”

“Maybe I should dance with Mira next, and wave my fingers under her nose. I could see if any lights came on in those green eyes.”

“You’re a troublemaker,” I said.

“Not half the troublemaker you are tonight.”

“Me? I haven’t done a thing.”

“She’s locked onto you, Michael. And she can be quite the flirt, which of course you’ve noticed.”

“It’s all harmless,” I answered.

Before I knew what was happening, Grace took my head in her hands, and slid them around.

“Hey!” I protested, knowing that my cheeks and hair now smelled like a certain redhead’s excited cunt.

“You deserve that,” she said, “for either being naïve or a terrible liar.”

Wednesday morning came, and Mira and I got through the laundry lists of our pasts before finishing our first cappuccinos. She sat across from me with sunlight raking across her left shoulder and chest, her bare arms looking elegant and toned, her breasts just a bit too pronounced for a dancer.

She was from upper-class Chicago roots, had moved to our fair city when she was fifteen, and was now twenty-six. Ballet training from the age of five, followed by four years of modern dance study while attending college in New York. She’d gone professional right out of college, and was one of The Movement Machine’s top performers. No children, but Taylor wanted them. She asked me how I chose psychology as my vocation, and I gave her the Cliff Notes version of my life: Thirty, born in San Francisco, schooled at Stanford, single, yada yada.

“Just dive straight in,” I suggested, when Mira finally admitted that she was afraid to begin talking about the things on her mind.

“My marriage is in trouble,” she blurted. “I want to make things work, but it just doesn’t… work.”

“You’re sure you should be talking to me about this? You barely know me.”

“You’re exactly who I want to talk with. You have an impressive… solidity, and you’re used to listening to these kinds of things. You probably know the exact questions to ask and I… I trust you.”

I laughed a little nervously, but then slipped into the role she wanted me to play. “Do you love him?” I asked.

Her eyes darted, and she didn’t answer.

“Wow. You know how much you just said, don’t you?”

“I know,” she replied, her lips trembling.

“It’s hard to make things work if the feeling isn’t there. It’s almost impossible.”

“I keep thinking that I’ll come to love him,” she said. “It isn’t like Taylor is a bad man, it’s just… He’s so stuffy and ordered. I hate that about him.”

“You knew he was this way when you married?”

“Yes. I don’t know what I must have been thinking.”

“Were your parents ordered like that?”

“Yes! Especially my father. I must have thought that Taylor was safe somehow, because he was sort of familiar. I didn’t know… He just doesn’t excite me. I wonder if he could ever excite me.”

“He’s a nice-looking man.”

“Which ends up doing nothing for me somehow.”

“Are we talking sex now?”

“Yes.”

“I shouldn’t probe, then. Just tell me what you want to tell me.”

“I don’t mind if you probe,” she said, looking at her hands on the table.

It might have been right there that I recognized where we were, and what the rules might be. I stared at her hands as she did, and moved my gaze up her arms, taking in her just-right breasts, and the natural girlish curls in her hair, the glimmering eyes and the lovely planes of her face. She was too beautiful, and it got to me, and I could see that she understood how it would get to me.

“Does Taylor know that we’re having coffee?” I asked.

“No. I don’t have male friends. He would never allow me to have a male friend.”

“Because he doesn’t trust you?”

“Because of my looks.”

“Ah.”

“I excite men.”

“Intentionally?”

“No. Wait, that isn't true. Yes. It isn’t like I have to try, but sometimes… I guess I flirt, sometimes rather shamelessly. I’ve… There are several friends or associates of Taylor’s that have propositioned me. I gave them reasons to think I could be had.”

“You like the attention?”

“I like being beautiful. I like the idea of giving all of this…”

And here she glanced down, indicating that fabulous body of hers.

“…to someone. It would be terrible to let it all go to waste. Sometimes I can’t help flaunting it.”

“Like when you dance.”

“You noticed. Professionally I’m rock solid, and I do what the choreographer tells me to do. But at those dance workshops where we met… I’m a horrible show-off, aren’t I?”

“I wouldn’t call it horrible.”

“I… I get kind of turned-on when I do that. I don’t know why. I feel like I’m being sort of naughty, and it makes me… I never get that excited when Taylor and I are in bed. There isn’t any… energy. He desires me like crazy, but I just feel like my on-switch is stuck in the “off” position. I fulfill my… duties… God, just listen to me. Sex feels like a duty, and I want… heat.”

“Is there more?”

“I have fantasies,” she went on. “Taylor would die if he knew about them.”

I almost said something, but stopped when I noticed that her hands had crept forward on the table. Our pinkies were about a quarter of an inch from touching.

"Sexual fantasies?" I asked.

She shivered. “I keep fantasizing about having an affair,” Mira confessed. “Something where sex would be all heat, and no duty.”

“Would you ever go through with something like that?”

“No, I could never do it. I flirt, and dream about it, but they’re just fantasies.”

I sat there, tuning in. I could be just another man that she enjoyed getting hard, but I sensed other possibilities. I could easily imagine another man coming on too strong in response to her flirting, and scaring her off. But if I could earn her trust, and draw her in…

“I don’t want Taylor to know that we talked,” she said, not really changing the subject. “Promise me that you won’t tell anyone.”

“I promise.”

“I really feel that I can trust you.”

“Don’t put any faith in me that I don’t deserve. I’m not immune to… things.”

We both fell silent then, for just long enough that it felt significant.

“Grace tells me that you don’t have a girlfriend,” Mira tacked. “Why is that?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “I had a year-long relationship going with someone until earlier this year. She moved to Boston for work, and we decided that she wouldn’t have taken the job if we were a long-term item.”

“No girlfriend, then. Flings?”

“Never had a taste for them. Why enter into something that goes ‘poof’? If it’s good, you want more, and if it’s no good, what are you doing there?”

“You should definitely have a woman in your life. You could make her really happy.”

“You don’t happen to have a twin sister, do you?” I half-joked.

She smiled at that one, squirming a little in her chair. “Sorry. There’s only me.”

She looked out the window then, as though curious about something outside. I could read in her profile that she had liked what I’d said, about the twin sister. It’s hard to describe, but a different kind of attitude seemed to radiate out from her, even though nothing really changed. And then, almost through relaxing rather than moving, the hand that had been so close to mine shifted slightly, until our pinkies touched. The contact was so slight, yet my heart began to beat faster. She didn’t move her hand away, and neither did I.

“Come watch me dance,” she said, turning to look right into my eyes. “I’m performing this weekend and I’m especially happy with the choreography. It’s… expressive. Come opening night, on Friday. I think you’d be surprised by the things I can do.”

I read the subtext, that the sentence was actually, I think you’d be surprised by the things my body can do. “Okay, I’ll be there,” I replied.

“Maybe I could introduce you to one or two of the other dancers at the after-performance party. You need a girlfriend and they’re all sexy.”

Something in my eyes must have given away my unspoken question, because her expression changed, and she shook her head. “Forget that I just offered that. I really don’t think any of those girls are quite right for you. And I might be a little pissed-off if you fell for one of them.”

I sat in my office after that conversation, gathering my thoughts by entering a few of the things she had said into my computer logs. It was all crystal clear. Mira had unresolved father issues, and had unconsciously chosen a mate who kept familiar patterns in play. Her husband represented stability, but also emotional constriction and a controlling presence to be resisted. I could just imagine what she must be like in bed with him, supremely gorgeous yet bound with invisible passion-stealing chains.

Poor Taylor. Mira probably felt sorry for him on one level, and might even hate him on another.

It really was a waste of her beauty and youth, as she’d said. No wonder she had fantasies where her passions could run free. She had never said it in so many words, but I was certain that these fantasies drove her into some extremely intense masturbation sessions, and I was also certain that I’d become a recent addition to these fantasies.

She was in parts. Not in an extreme way, it wasn’t to the point of having distinct and split personalities, but she needed a therapist to help integrate her psyche. One side of her required a stable, picture-perfect life, whereas another less predictable aspect wished to rebel, and explore much of what she probably considered coarse or “loose”. Under normal circumstances, a woman like Mira would be a joy to work with. She was intelligent and productive, socially graceful and almost completely functional — a human being in need of a serious tune-up, nothing more. I couldn’t do the work, though, not officially. My feelings for her were already inappropriate, especially since I’d recently jacked-off to my own fantasy, where she showed up at my front door, wearing an ankle length raincoat with nothing but garters and heels underneath.

I sat there for perhaps two hours, weighing the possibilities. When asked point-blank, she said that she couldn’t go through with an affair, and she’d meant it. That part — the “I’m really a good girl” part — even contemplated setting me up with one of her dancer friends. Yet almost in the next breath, she as much as said that she would be the best choice for me, and that she might even fight for me if one of her friends liked me too much. That was the voice of the naughty Mira, and it seemed to me that the naughty Mira held the keys to all of her sexual energy. Again, they weren’t separate personalities, but two sides holding conflicting sets of values. Because her naughty side was largely unacknowledged, it was almost like a war for dominance existed inside of her, a struggle by the repressed aspect for the expression of its wishes. And if the naughty side won…

Others had come before me. She had sucked them in with her dynamite body and her alluring wide eyes, raising their hopes. But they had failed to close the deal, because the good girl in her had won out. I could imagine the frustration of the men she had drawn in, having a walking wet dream almost fall in their laps, only to see it dance away at the last minute. They had probably pressed too hard, not recognizing the depths of her conflict. The risk existed that I could become just another one of the many, which wasn’t what I wanted at all. I wanted to be the one. I wanted to be the one in a way that even her husband could never be.

I got so hard imagining how I might be able to push all the right buttons, working her up and steering her in a way that no one had managed before. Ethically, even with Mira never becoming one of my clients, these kinds of thoughts were as wrong as they could be, and I knew that. All of my training dictated that I needed to steer clear, no matter what the different sides of Mira wanted.

But then I thought of that dynamic we’d come to while dancing, where we moved so well together, all because I followed while pretending that I believed I was leading. Could it work that well in reverse, too? Unconscious desires were my area of expertise, as hers was dancing. Could I lead her right into my bed by pulling her mind- strings, all while pretending to follow?

I kept hearing her voice in my head about how much she trusted me. It was the only thing she had said twice, but the meaning wasn’t necessarily clear. She trusted me to do the right thing, or she trusted me to cooperate in her seduction? If there were two warring impulses inside, she might have meant entirely different things each time she said it.

The justifications for fucking her swam in my mind, and they weren’t completely ridiculous. I would never actually seduce her — it would be more like steering her into seducing me. All I needed to do was soothe the conscience of the good Mira, while throwing gasoline on the bad Mira’s drives. I could even be honest with her — in fact, honesty would be paramount, setting up something like a protective cocoon where she could go at her own speed, succumbing only if and when the naughty Mira won out. Nothing would be coerced. I would merely follow.

Trying to find a way to be a good guy, rather than a devil, I looked up the verb “coerce” in the dictionary: To compel to an act or choice. Hmmm. Now I had to flip to the verb “compel”: To cause to do or occur by overwhelming pressure. Interestingly, there was no distinction as to whether the pressure came from the outside, or was caused to boil from within.

“You’re trying to fool yourself,” I spoke out loud, slamming the dictionary shut. It was devil territory and nothing else. Going at Mira as I planned would be an outright seduction filled with dirty little mind-controlling tricks, only with my hands pre-washed. Which, I had to admit, was one hell of a turn-on.