I won’t bore you with the details of my public lecture a week later. Rest assured that I was absolutely brilliant as I described my methods for working the psychological territory beneath various addictive behaviors.

Actually, I was just very good, the entire enterprise quite sober. I’m comfortable at a podium — I know my material and how to put it into story form, which helps draw an audience where you wish to lead them. I don’t read from a paper or deliver what might be called a “prepared” presentation — I prefer to wing it, relying on a certain verbal nimbleness that Grace is fond of calling my “Mercury energy”. According to her, it’s an asset shared by most Gemini’s, although I’d never given much credence to the character traits assigned to each sign of the zodiac.

Then again, Gemini’s are supposed to have two sides, or personalities, living side by side within them, and I certainly fit the model. On the one hand, I am calm, honest and professional. I had also come to see through recent events that I am manipulative, at times morally bankrupt, and quite possibly addicted to having sex with a certain married dancer.

Of particular interest to me that evening was the rapt attention of Coral Brackedge, sitting in the front row towards my left. From the moment I arrived on campus, I had been in the care of Dr. Arthur Hawthorne, an acquaintance from a Chicago conference and the chairman of this university’s psychology department. I had not met with Coral beforehand, and though I could not focus upon her as I lectured, I quickly assessed four things: One, she was just as gorgeous as I’d remembered. Two, she had chosen to obscure her breasts again by wearing another vest. Three, she had terrific legs. They were sheathed in green tights, and her black skirt, while of “professional” length, showed enough for me to know that Grace had been right. Coral was quality. She was exceptional quality, everywhere.

And four, she made my dick hard. I hugged the podium as I lectured, my professional mind and pulsing cock-mind completely at odds with each other.

Upon concluding the lecture and the following question/answer exchange, I found myself surrounded by several hangers-on, everything from hypno-geeks to hospice specialists. Coral stood alone in the aisle as the auditorium cleared, patiently waiting. At the first opportunity I went over to her, and we hugged for the first time.

“Dr. Hawthorne and a few of the other professors are taking me out to a Greek restaurant for dinner,” I said, the invitation in my eyes.

“You can bring a date?”

“I won’t go if you can’t go.”

“A gallant reply,” she smiled.

“Maybe I just want to sit close to you.” And misbehave, I silently finished.

She smiled her mesmerizing puffy cheek smile, but her eyes narrowed, as if she surmised my unspoken thought. “Don’t push,” she cautioned, simultaneously taking my arm.

The night was like that, with Coral as my date, but showing no signs of being an easy lay. At the dinner she was the perfect companion, neither too quiet nor too effusive, going with the flow of the conversation, then picking her spots to steer things into fresh territory. Occasionally she would lean into me for a private word or two, treating me to the scent of her hair, or the tiniest brush of her hand. It was all so slight, but I thrilled to the subtle merging of our personal space. I began to feel as though we sat within a shared private atmosphere, the air more oxygen-rich and volatile than normal.

Coral offered to walk me to my hotel after dinner, which felt significant, because it was freezing outside. With her body hidden by a long woolen coat, I found my eyes delighting in the planes of her face and the fine texture of her hair, its reddish tones standing out in the warm glow of mercury-vapor lights. I had to look down at Coral as we talked while walking — she was probably only five feet tall, although not so much short as slightly miniaturized. Her proportions seemed almost tortuously ideal, just… little. I wondered what dress size she wore. I wondered where her breasts would press against my body if I lay on top of her. I wondered whether my dick would look tremendous when slipping inside of her downsized cunt.

“A few of our friends at dinner would contemplate breaking my knees if you gave the word,” I said, curious about something I’d noticed.

She laughed. “They may teach in a different department, but I’m still one of their colleagues.”

“It was more than that.”

She went silent for a bit. “A couple of the professors you met… They like me.”

“A great deal, apparently.”

“You saw that. Yes, all three of the single men at our table have asked me out. You had something of a target on your forehead, because I turned them down.”

“You’ve been teaching here since…”

“Since September.”

“And already the raptors are circling.”

“Well… I’m highly desirable.”

I liked the way she said that. Not stuck-up, not filled with vanity, but also absent of any need to be false about it. It was reminiscent of Mira’s remark that day we first kissed: I know I’m beautiful. A question arose inside, and I couldn’t keep it from coming out. “Okay, Coral,” I said, stopping on the sidewalk. “Why me?”

She stopped, too, and looked up. “Why you what?”

“You turned them down, but…”

She cocked her head sideways and laughed lightly, hot steam venting into the cold night air. “Don’t go off into fantasy on me, Michael. You haven’t gotten anywhere yet.”

Her words didn’t sound like a joke, but then they didn’t feel like a slap, either. I wasn’t quite sure whether there had been a message behind her statement at all, but what I felt in response, tingling my cock but not only my cock, was an intense kind of… need. I just fucking wanted this woman, but it wasn’t so simple.

“Come to my apartment for some tea,” she said, staring up at me, her eyes inscrutable.

“I’m… not sure what’s going on,” I admitted.

“I’m asking you to come up to my apartment for some hot tea,” she answered. I must have looked distrustful, or hopeful, or simply confused, because she added: “I never go to bed with someone on a first date, no exceptions, so don’t even think it. Just tea, Michael, and conversation.”

“Did you ever invite any of those interested professors up to your apartment for tea?”

“No,” she answered, her eyes wary. “I didn’t.”

“Then don’t try to tell me that I haven’t gotten anywhere,” I said. “’Just tea’. Like hell it’s just tea’.”

She laughed, and took my hand. “This way.” And after a few steps she stopped, and looked up at me again. “You have an underlying naughty streak.”

“It’s what makes me highly desirable, too.”

She didn’t laugh; instead her eyes became extraordinarily wide as they sometimes did. “You could be trouble,” she finally said. “You may not know it, but you’ve got trouble written all over you.”

You can tell a great deal about a person from the environment they create in their home. Rosita Bello, for instance, had a dance platform in her apartment, and a gleaming pole to wrap her legs and tits around for seductive dance practice. Mira lived in an ordered, “Better Homes and Garden” sort of way, yet somewhere in her immaculate household there must be a camera and a couple of studio lights stashed away for her to burn mega-seductive sex films onto DVDs, and into my brain. I had a small Cape Cod with a somewhat neglected lawn — a cozy bachelor’s house, and now it was a bachelor’s house with a sex-stained beanbag chair, purchased by special request for my drive-through secret hypnotized lover.

Coral lived at the top of a charming three story brick building on a quiet tree-lined street. The moment I walked through the threshold of her apartment, I was met with a surprise, which came in the face-licking, tail-wagging form of a German shepherd.

“You have a dog!” I exclaimed, flaunting the depths of my intellect.

“I have a four-legged soulmate named Scarlet,” she beamed, grabbing a leash from a hook near the door. “The kitchen is right over there — put on some hot water while I give Scarlet five minutes of undivided outdoor attention.”

They left and I performed the task, absorbing the vibe of Coral’s kitchen. She was a cook, or at least liked to cook. She ground her own coffee, and kept a ton of fresh vegetables — probably organic — in her refrigerator. A peek at her wine rack told me that she was willing to part with sufficient money to secure a quality Cabernet or Pinot Noir.

I surveyed her living room. Mostly antique furniture, but the mix was eclectic, not stuffy. Tons of books lining built-in shelves, heavy on art and classics and even heavier on Western philosophy, Eastern religions and astrology. I moved from the shelves to the walls, which were jam-packed with original drawings and paintings, mostly small works in nearly every conceivable style.

I listened at the door. Confident that I had the time, I found Coral’s bedroom, and stepped inside, breathing in deeply. The room smelled like Coral, not Scarlet, and Coral smelled very, very good. Taking the risk, I opened the drawers of her single dresser, until I found what I wanted to find. Panties on one side, bras on the other. My hardening dick applauded the combination of numbers and letters on the bands of her bras, and I couldn’t resist lifting a pair of panties to my face, and breathing in deeply. Light flowery detergent smell. It would mix quite beautifully with female arousal.

All six female legs returned a minute or two after I’d settled back in the living room. Coral finished the tea preparation and curled up on a soft swivel chair. I got the sofa, with Scarlet’s head on my lap, her underside pointing at the ceiling to draw the attention of my rubbing hand. I was in the mood for some heavy petting myself, because Coral had removed both her coat and the vest. She removed her shoes, too, and her small feet in the green tights looked just as shapely as her legs.

“There were several questions tonight about using your techniques for pain management,” she began. “Had you thought of taking your work in that direction? Would it even work?”

I had considered this before, but had performed no experiments in that direction. Coral asked several more questions relating to the contents of my lecture, and I saw her nose wrinkle enough times that I knew something was up.

“I really don’t know if I should critique your take on things,” she said, when I probed. “You’re the expert, after all.”

“But?” I led her. “You found something lacking, I can tell.”

“It seems to me that your vision is too limited. It’s obvious how effective you can be for your clients, but I think you’ve failed to make an important connection, or at least an important distinction.”

This was interesting. She wasn’t a shy one, that was for sure. I encouraged her to lay it on me.

“You’ve become an expert on addictive behaviors, and their complex psychological underpinnings, and I can accept all of that. But not all seemingly compulsive behaviors are about addictions.

“I never said they were.”

“True, but I still see a gaping hole in your mindset.”

“Which is?”

“One word: Obsession.”

“Obsession. I distinctly remember speaking about obsessive-compulsive disorders.”

“True, but… I’ll tell you how I see it. A person can’t stop eating, can’t stop smoking, can’t stop doing all sorts of things. If it’s physical, it’s an outright addiction. And perhaps there are hidden reasons for this addiction, the kind of thing you delve into with your methods. Then there is obsessive-compulsive disorder, a recognized condition caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain.”

“So far so good.”

“Ah, but what if a sculptor behaves obsessively, because he or she can’t stop sculpting? What if a musician can’t stop playing, or composing?”

“They’re creative types, and they want to create. They’re driven, not obsessed. An obsession, by definition, is a destructive behavior. Artists and musicians get rewarded for their efforts. That’s constructive.”

“Not necessarily. What about so-called ‘outsider’ art?”

“I’m not so familiar with that.”

“Think of a grizzled old man living out in a shack in the woods, or working all hours in the garage behind his house. He dies and people discover that he spent almost every waking hour for the last twenty years of his life building a huge replica of the Titanic out of billions of bent paper clips. Is someone like that addicted to the activity, or is he obsessed with it? Addiction is clinical — it involves no higher motivation, no higher possibility. Obsession can be different — it might be like an addiction in form, but it includes an element of hope, or vision, or perhaps even love. Maybe that paper clip ship is the most incredible work of art to be made in fifty years, in terms of dedication to the task. Is it the product of an addiction to bending paper clips, or is it something else?”

I didn’t respond — not because her outsider art example was foolproof, but because my own situation suddenly grew in scope and dimension. I had come to believe that I was addicted to sex with Mira, and that I’d caused her to feel the same thing — amplified — in return. What if, as Coral suggested, this was not about addiction at all? If Mira was obsessed with me, and I with her, did that change anything? Were there motivations I hadn’t seen? Might there even be some creative element to the relationship?

“You’ve gone quiet,” Coral observed. “Did I go too far?”

“No, not at all. I’m… thinking. You’ve given me something new to chew over.”

“Give me credit when you write a book on the intersection between addiction and obsession.”

“Are you obsessive by nature?” I asked.

She recoiled momentarily, my question surprising her. “I don’t think so,” she said. “Why do you ask?”

“You’ve obviously thought about this before.” My eyes gravitated towards her breasts as I said this.

“True. I don’t think I’m the obsessive type, though. I’m too levelheaded, sometimes to a fault. My interest is more…” She faltered for a few seconds, her arms crossing at the front. Unconsciously hiding her breasts? “I’ll be blunt,” she continued. “I’ve been the object of obsession before. I was even stalked once, and it wasn’t a game. In some ways I feel as though I know the territory.”

I didn’t even have to ask. The vests she wore to cover her prominent breasts, and having a German shepherd for a companion… She was a great-looking woman, and being so petite yet ultra-curvy had this unusual way of amplifying her sexiness. The fact was, Coral looked like a perfect little fuck-toy, and I, for one, was determined to find the key to wind her up.

I decided to test the waters. “When do I get to see your art?” I asked “I might decide to become obsessed with you myself, but first I need to see whether you have talent.”

She laughed, then surprised me by making a sweeping gesture that indicated her walls. “You’re already looking at three pieces from my hand. Guess which ones.”

“That isn’t fair. I know a Rembrandt or a Pollock when I see one, but that’s about it. I could be staring at famous contemporary masters, and I wouldn’t know it.”

“What you’re staring at are works I’ve acquired over the years by trading paintings and drawings with my friends. Humor me, though. Three are mine. Guess which ones.”

I got up and quickly studied the choices. “Those atmospheric ones,” I said, knowing I’d be wrong.

“Wrong,” she confirmed. “Those are by a sweet guy I liked in undergrad. These three are mine,” she pointed, indicating a still-life painting and two drawings of female nudes.

“You’re kidding,” I said, genuinely surprised. “I thought your work would be more… I don’t know…”

“Edgy?”

“Yes, edgy. You’re mostly a performance artist, right?”

“Correct. I did some dancing and acting when I was younger, and morphed that with writing into performance pieces. But I’ve always painted, too. And next fall I’m going to have to teach a life-drawing class.”

“And life drawing means…”

“Drawing nude models. I need to refresh my skills before September, because I don’t draw the figure that often.”

I went over to the figure pieces and scrutinized them. One was pencil, the other charcoal. She had a good hand, or maybe it was a good eye. The women in the drawings were attractive, and because of the attention to detail, I was pretty sure I’d recognize them if I met them.

“They’re friends of mine,” Coral said, intuiting my train of thought.

She had good-looking friends. I stole a few glances at Coral, imagining what she might look like if she were standing before me in the manner of these women. She obviously worked out, probably at the university gym. Her skin was fair — though not a full-fledged redhead, she was the kind of woman who might need an umbrella while sunning on a beach. I suddenly imagined her like that, in a microscopic bikini with wet sand clinging to her breasts and belly. The image was so clear that it was almost like a vision, as opposed to a daydream.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she interrupted.

“You do?”

“The answer is yes. I’ll undoubtedly ask you to pose for me. Like I said, I need the practice before the fall.”

I sat down again, absorbing this. Those were drawings of naked people, to begin with. More importantly, Coral already saw us spending more time together. “I’ll only model for you if I you model for me,” I said, the words flying out before I could weigh them.

I saw fire flash in her blue eyes, and amusement, too. “Sounds like ‘I’ll show you mine if you show me yours’.”

“That sums it up nicely.”

“So you draw? I didn’t know that therapists could draw.”

“I’ll draw if it’s you I’m drawing.”

She shifted her legs, and I watched. She was smiling, but it wasn’t the puffed-out cheek smile. This smile had more tension in it.

“Drawing well isn’t easy, Michael. It takes repetition to get things right. Lots of return engagements. Dedication.”

“Commitment, you mean.”

Her eyes were challenging. “Yes, commitment. And proper pacing. Things shouldn’t be rushed.”

“I don’t mind whatever pace is needed, Coral. Quick and magical or slow and steady… I’m versatile, and willing to do whatever it takes.”

We both knew what we were doing. Her breathing had changed, and she suddenly jumped out of her chair, pacing briefly. “You need to…” She stopped speaking and walking at the same time, and fixed her gaze on me. I could almost taste her nipples on my tongue, the desire was so intense.

“Whatever pace is needed,” I repeated, trying to look like I meant it. The pace I wanted was right now, and fast and hard.

“Slow down! I did a chart on us,” she said, looking and sounding breathless. “As a couple, I mean. It was… mixed.”

“A chart? What are you talking about?”

“Grace told me the year and city where you were born, and that it was about three in the morning. You have to give me the exact minute of your birth for me to chart everything more precisely,” she continued, pulling a sheet of paper from a shelf. “We could be good together — two air signs, with both of us having complimentary positive attributes. But you’re also… risky.”

“Risky?”

“Listen carefully, Michael,” she said, her eyes blue pools of sincerity. “I don’t do flings, I just don’t. We have to be building towards something, or…”

“That chart says I’m here for a fling?”

“This chart tells me that you’re extremely passionate. I like that, only it also tells me that you have a restless streak a mile wide. You could have commitment issues.”

“As in ch…cheating?” I stuttered, my face flushing.

“As in having a hard time committing to the idea of a single life partner.”

I felt totally nailed, but didn’t show it. “What are you going to trust, Coral? That sheet of paper, or…” She was grinning, and I decided to beat a hasty retreat before I got myself into real trouble. “You’re screwing with me,” I finally said.

She laughed, and then her eyes softened. She stepped towards me, reaching up to stroke my cheek with the back of her hand. The moment felt right and I bent down to kiss her, and she let it happen. Her lips were full, but again small; they nestled within mine in an intriguing way, feeling like… home. When the tip of her tongue slowly reached out I met it, and we danced a very slow dance inside of each other’s mouths. The flat of my hands explored the terrain of her middle and lower back, slowly moving forward to her upper arms. Everything was small, and toned, and I was only a few inches from cupping the breasts that were quickly becoming my new obsession.

Coral slowly pulled away just as the heels of my hands met the outer edges of her tits. Her eyes conveyed inner conflict, not disapproval. And then she spun on her heels, almost running away to get my coat.

“I want you to go now,” she exhaled, her cheeks red, eyes evasive. “I’ll come by the hotel tomorrow at nine. We’ll have breakfast and I’ll show you the city. Deal?”

I couldn’t help noticing that Coral’s nipples looked thimble-big and thimble-hard pushing at her blouse. I could probably force this, and at least get to third base before leaving. Only it might torpedo my chances for a homerun later.

“Deal,” I answered, my dick screaming for mercy.

I was insanely horny back at the hotel, longing for Coral’s body in a way that had my heart running laps. With my cock pulsing, I saw her ankles and calves as they had filled out the green tights. I saw the fine round shapes of her breasts, looking deliciously over-sized in relation to the rest of her petite figure. I recalled the way her large nipples had grown right in front of my eyes as we kissed. Her lips had felt so right, and her smell had smelled just right. She had come this-close to abandoning her rules about first dates, I was certain of it.

We were arriving at something naturally, and I couldn’t help contrasting these feelings for Coral with the ways I had acquired both Mira and Rosita, so dependant on various forms of deception and manipulation. Despite her strangely accurate zodiac-inspired reservations, I’d gotten Coral hot, hot enough that she’d needed to confess her concerns, going straight into the possibility of commitment. She wouldn’t have brought it up if she didn’t want me enough to think about the future.

And I wasn’t even gaming Coral — much — as the only deception was one of omission, hiding my recent sexual sins from her. No unethical psychological karate, no even less ethical hypnotic manipulations. I probably could have scored Mira this same way if she hadn’t been married.

About Mira, Coral had given me a fresh insight into that situation: I was obsessed with Mira. It wasn’t love, and it wasn’t an addiction. I was obsessed with Mira’s body, and especially the fact that I had turned her into something like a permanently hypnotized super-lover. She was obsessed with me in return, if not outright addicted, my hypnotic interventions creating a need in her that steamrolled my conscience while steaming my dick.

I showered and went to bed, but sleep was miles away. I felt like I had too many different Michaels living inside my own skin — too many conflicting desires creating schemes for sexual gratification. I wanted to whack off, and might have called Mira for phone sex if I could have. I also thought of calling Rosita for a phone strip-tease, but she would be at work now, stripping for real. It was a stupid idea anyway, the thoughts of a horny as hell therapist in a strange town, with no one to turn to for gratification.

I thought about ordering some pay-per-view porn, but those films usually lacked any art, and they bored me. So I closed my eyes, and pictured what Coral might look like naked. She had felt so tiny yet solid, and when my hands had grazed the outer contours of her breasts… The phone rang after only a few light strokes on my hard cock. When I lifted the receiver, I wasn’t surprised to hear Coral’s voice. It was as if stroking myself to her image had summoned the actual woman.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have sent you away,” she whispered through the line.

“I can’t sleep, either,” I countered.

“You were right, Michael. You have gotten somewhere. Only I don’t do flings,” she repeated.

This was obviously a huge thing for her, to know that any connection would be a serious one. “I don’t do flings either,” I assured her, and it was technically true. Rosita had been a client I’d fucked, not a fling. With Mira, she was the married one, not me. And it was hardly a fling when we’d been fucking for months.

“There’s still so much we don’t know about each other,” Coral sighed.

“I’m an open book, remember? You have your astrological chart.”

“I believe in it… but I want to believe in my instincts, too. You’re complicated, but so is everybody. And men can mature out of their silly patterns, can’t they?”

“Yes, they can,” I replied, wondering what exact patterns she was alluding to.

“And you’re a therapist. You aren’t a prisoner to your chart, because you can see into your own psyche and make adjustments. You know yourself. Right?”

I assured her that this was true.

“You… stare at my body sometimes,” she stated, out of the blue.

“Only because I have a pulse,” I quipped defensively. When she didn’t laugh I asked, “Do we have a problem? Have I made you uncomfortable?”

She didn’t answer. Instead she said: “You’re a good kisser.”

My dick throbbed with relief. “Thank you. The pleasure was all mine.”

“Not all of it.”

“That’s encouraging.”

“I like that you don’t pretend with me.”

“Pretend?”

“You want me. And you don’t try to hide that.”

“I don’t think I could hide that if I tried.”

“I usually don’t like being stared at so… hungrily.”

“But in this case?”

She didn’t give a direct answer again. “I really like your voice. Something about it calms me.”

“It’s the essential tool of my profession. When you draw, you have a pencil, or a stick of charcoal. I just have my voice.”

“It doesn’t only calm me. It also makes me feel… excited.”

Her words surprised me, to the point that I was the one falling into silence.

“It’s been a good while for me, Michael. My last boyfriend…He did things behind my back. I was good to him, I loved him, and I… I don’t know why he did that.”

“He cheated on you,” I stated the obvious.

“I was stunned. I guess I thought too much of myself, that he couldn’t possibly want anyone else if he had me. It really hurt and… I kind of swore off relationships for a while. I’ve been afraid.”

I felt an inner ka-ching, that moment when a person’s psychological truth suddenly rises to the surface to be seen and scrutinized. I’d known that Coral must have a fault-line somewhere, because we all do. She had betrayal issues, or perhaps even abandonment issues to some degree. And as so often happens, her being had led her straight into the lion’s den — me. She felt compelled to flirt with disaster, though it wasn’t a conscious journey, thank God. Still, part of her knew it, and this part would have to become convinced that I wouldn’t hurt her.

“It’s been a long time for me, Michael,” she repeated. “I haven’t… It’s been more than a year. Fifteen months.”

It wasn’t like I couldn’t hear that voice in myself, the one shouting out how my obsession with Mira made me exactly what Coral didn’t need to get mixed up with. But everything else was almost completely drowned out by one supremely hardening thought: This fuck-toy treasure had gone fifteen months without being screwed? JesusdrippingChrist!

“Tell me what you’re thinking right now,” she challenged.

“I think…” I began, my voice nearly as thick as my cock. I gave myself a hard squeeze, trying to conjure the correct thing to say. “I think I need to know what it is that you’re trying to tell me, Coral. You’re telling me that you have reasons for being afraid to enter into a relationship…”

“A sexual relationship,” she clarified.

“Are you saying me that we can’t go there? Or are you giving me a sense of where you are because we are going forward?”

Silence on the line. I thought I heard her breathing a little heavily, and just that little bit of sound sent electricity all through me.

“You want me really badly,” she said next.

I didn’t deny it.

“I want…” she began, but stopped.

“Just tell me what you want. Don’t be afraid.”

“I know… I’d remember what to do,” she whispered. “How to move, how to do things.”

In bed, I filled in for myself, stroking the tip of my cock. Three more indirectly dirty words from this shy sexpot would have me shooting uncontrollably.

“I feel all flustered,” she continued, and it sounded like the phone almost dropped from her ear. Could her hands be elsewhere? I heard an unintelligible sound before she said, “I don’t like to feel out of control like this, like my body is telling me what to do.”

I imagined her lying in bed, her nipples hard for me with her fingertips teasing them. She hadn’t been fucked in over a year and it must feel like torture.

“This is so dangerous!” she exclaimed. “It’s all too fast! I didn’t know that things would progress this fast when I agreed to meet you. I… I didn’t want to feel like this.”

“You mean you thought you didn’t want it,” I tried to steer her. “And now…”

“S…stop. We need to stop. Please. Maybe I’d better try to get to sleep again. I’ll be there at nine. Good night, Michael.”

She rang off quickly, and my aching crying dick silently wished her troubled sexy dreams. I began to stroke it in earnest, feeling like she had poured her words right into me, inflating me to the breaking point.

And then, barely believing what I was doing, I stopped. I wanted to fuck this woman, not fuck myself thinking about fucking her. Blowing out a gust of air, I turned my mind towards what she had revealed on the phone, and what it meant. It happens so often, that people unconsciously attract the very thing to help them confront their worst fears. In this we were more alike than different. I was a ticking betrayal bomb for Coral; she was a woman who had everything it took to make me make a decision about Mira.

Tick, tick, tick…

I kept picturing Coral in my mind, and then I would see Mira, her dynamite legs spread, her eyes burning for sex. I couldn’t keep Mira as a plaything on the side — it just wouldn’t work, morally or tactically. It would all have to end, and I would have to be the one to end it.

Somehow.

Like watching different films in my head with several possible endings, I imagined various scenarios where I confronted Mira with the news that we couldn’t see each other any more. Every possibility led my thoughts down a slightly different path, but anything that felt realistic included some kind of disaster.

I don’t know how many times I turned over in bed before finally drifting off, only to awakening at five in the morning, my cock on fire. I’d been dreaming of fucking a woman, a woman who was once again both Coral and Mira, somehow all wrapped into one. Fuck, was this becoming a recurring dream?

Hugging the pillow, I rolled over, aware that the desires within my subconscious mind were totally at odds with the realities of life. I wanted both things, both women. I wanted to be Boy Scout clean while living a dirty sexy secret life. I wanted the impossible, and without any accompanying complications.

Dream on.

I thought Coral would call from the lobby to begin our day together. By a quarter to nine I was showered and dressed, and surprised to hear a light knock at my hotel room door. When I opened it. Coral stood there with her winter coat draped over an arm. She wasn’t wearing a vest today — in fact, she had gone in the opposite direction, sheathing her upper body in a form-fitting teal blue blouse with a scooping neckline. She slipped inside the door and closed it, leaning her back against it as though needing the support to stand. I had this weird moment of déjà vu, because Mira had been in a position so similar to this the first time we kissed.

Coral looked up at me and her eyes were troubled, although I couldn’t read the exact emotion. Her chest was heaving, which was sexy as hell, but something seemed very wrong.

“Coral? Are you okay?” I asked, instantly imagining a conversation she might have had with Grace, discovering my pile of sexual secrets.

She glided past me, and sat on the edge of the bed, looking disturbed. She didn’t look up; in fact her eyes seemed fixed on her feet and her legs, which were stretched out straight, crossed at the ankles. My eyes followed hers, taking in the shapeliness of her calves and the trim ankles that disappeared into brown heels. Her legs were bare this morning, her skin naturally smooth and sleek.

“I’ve thought about this all night long,” she said, her voice tense, or regretful.

Without saying another word, Coral grasped the bottom of her blouse, and with crossed arms, quickly pulled it over her head. Her breasts bounced when the fabric left them, and I stifled a gasp, my eyes locking onto the blue bra and all that lay within its cups. She hesitated, still looking down, before her hands went to her back. Her bra sagged when she unfastened it, but it didn’t totally let go.

“I think… I can’t stop myself,” she whispered, slowly pulling the bra away.

I sighed out loud, because it was love at first sight. On her tiny taut frame her breasts were oversized studies in total roundness, looking even bigger than they actually were. Even better were the perfectly shaped nipples, with finely edged aureola a little too large and a little too dark, thrusting out from the surrounding flesh with a little too much enthusiasm. The nipples themselves stood at full attention, as if searching for my lips and beckoning for my tongue. They were among the finest tits I’d ever seen anywhere, and I was in total love.

Coral slowly raised her gaze, lingering on the erection straining at the front of my pants. She looked far away somehow as her hands moved up her waist, cupping the underside of each breast. She gently squeezed them together, lowering her chin so that it rested in the soft valley of cleavage she had created, the sexiest chin-rest in history.

I thought I might come in my pants — largely from the tits, but not only the tits. And here I finally understood something crucial: It was Coral’s surrender that got to me. Her inability to stop herself, even if that meant that she couldn’t stop herself from seducing me. She knew exactly how gorgeous she was, and how it would get to me. She felt that I was dangerous, but the fire in her body overruled any doubts about me. The fears that must be alive in her psyche were shoved into the background, unable to compete with her lust. It was like an interior capitulation, the sudden collapse of rules that had governed her relationships with men for years, and I could see in her eyes that she felt overwhelmed from within.

As she had said, she was essentially helpless to stop herself. And now I finally understood that my obsession — with Mira and Rosita and here with Coral — was all about the unattainably beautiful woman suddenly made attainable, all because the mind became the slave of the body, and the body just fucking needed for me to fuck it. And this time with Coral, it was happening without any special tricks, without game-playing or hypnotic suggestions. My actions were close to being “clean”, but I was about to get what I’d lie, cheat and hypnotize for.

Coral’s fingertips tweaked the undersides of her nipples, and she shuddered, her eyelids fluttering. One of her hands descended to unzip the side of her skirt, and I quickly stepped in, kneeling between her legs and gently taking both of her hands in mine. Feigning a calm completely opposite to the rhinoceros charging through my chest and balls, I helped her slip the skirt down her beautiful bare legs.

“It’s been… so long,” she whispered, slowly lying back, her legs spreading wide. A small patch of deeper color punctuated the front triangle of her panties, her wetness seeping through. She smelled fucking hot. I slipped my thumbs under the sidebands of the panties, and her hips rose to help in slipping them away. She was putting herself in my hands, her surrender nearly total.

Seeing her completely naked for the first time, I couldn’t help but compare her to Mira. Coral’s physicality could be summed up with three T’s — tight, tiny and top-heavy. She was just as perfectly crafted as Mira, but her body was more sleek and smooth than dancer-hard. Her pubic hairs were neatly trimmed, and had the same traces of red as her hair. They crowned a pussy more petite than any I’d ever seen, and I couldn’t help but imagine ahead, wondering how tightly this tunnel would wrap around me, and what that might feel like.

I wanted to bury my face in the softness of those glorious tits while driving my dick hard and deep inside of her, but I sensed that Coral would need things slow and gentle. So much time had elapsed since she’d made love with anyone — for all I knew she might come extremely quickly, or perhaps some nervousness would make it a long, drawn-out affair. Whatever the pacing, Coral’s interior collapse left her wide open to whatever I wanted to give her. What I wanted was to bring her body to the edge and keep her there, whatever it took to make her fucking beg for more sex from me, now and in the future.

I began where I had to begin — her tits. Leaning in over top of her, I cupped them and moved my palms, taking in their volume and texture. Her nipples were fucking huge, and harder than any nipples I’d ever touched. Slowly, deliberately, I rolled them in my fingers, pulling slightly. With closed eyes, Coral gave out a series of short gasps, a knee rising to stroke my hips.

I was still dressed, which didn’t seem fair at all. Keeping one hand focused on her boobs, I removed my clothes and positioned myself on the bed, pulling her by the shoulders into the middle of the mattress. At her side, I took a nipple between my lips, tonguing its underside while allowing my cock to press into her thigh.

“Ohhh yes!” she cried. “More of that! Oh yes, play with them! Kiss them!” Her back arched, her boob pressing into my face. The nipple I sucked was the widest and longest to ever touch my lips — I could roll it with my tongue and make it move around and around, which had to be one of the biggest turn-ons of my life. Coral kept gasping as I did this, the groans and pants that flew out of her parted lips shocking in their intensity. I hadn’t done that much yet, but it sounded like she was about to lose it. Grasping her other breast and intensifying the sucking of her stiff, swollen nipple, I moved my pelvis, bringing my cock up to the top of her thigh. One of her hands grasped it and squeezed, just a second or two before her moaning went spastic, her entire body shuddering.

I couldn’t believe my eyes or ears, and I couldn’t recall giving the immersion command:: “Coo and moan like a crazed animal and come as Michael sucks your nipple”. Coral had come, and come hard, and I hadn’t even touched her pussy yet. The grip on my cock remained firm, but every other muscle seemed to turn to jelly, like years of tension had suddenly fled her body like a spirit passing to another plane. Her nipple was still in my mouth but my tongue went still — the thing was, I didn’t quite know what to do.

“Don’t… stop…” she barely breathed, her legs rising into the air, and spreading.

The invitation could not be more clear. Giving her just the tiniest bit of warning I,grazed her labia with the tip of my middle finger, my free hand stroking her inner thighs. Her hands wrapped around my cock and she guided me to her pussy, slowly rubbing me against her, getting me wet..

“Go… slow,” she whispered, which seemed like the obvious course of action. She really was a petite thing, and the contrast of her size to mine made me feel like I’d suddenly been granted one of those unreal-looking porn star dicks. Pressing in against Coral’s tiny tunnel, I could almost imagine my cock going where no cock had gone before, or at least where mine had never gone before.

I won’t try to mimic the sounds she made once we moved the fucking into high gear. Coral turned out to be a screamer and a half with a cock inside of her. She writhed beneath me, her spread legs bending and unbending and kicking against my upper back as though my thrusts kept punching some spring mechanism deep inside.

And I became quite vocal, too. I couldn’t help it — I’d never felt a pussy wrap around me with such a grip. With clearly read gyrations of her hips substituting for words, she encouraged me to cut loose, and I did. I thought she might tell me to stop when I began to jackhammer her, but she just spread her legs wider, inviting the deepest penetration I could achieve. I think my eyes bugged out the few moments before I blew my load, the tightness of her pussy essentially yanking the cum up and out from my balls. I became a screamer, too, flooding her with my breathless excitement.

We embraced afterwards, coming to a spooning position where my softened cock rested between her thighs, one of my arms pressed against her breasts. Coral fell asleep like this — I had the sense that, like me, she hadn’t slept well last night, wondering all night if she would succumb like this in the morning. I followed her lead, holding her tight and relaxing into slumber.

We made love twice more on the hotel bed. There wasn’t one thing about Coral’s body that I didn’t love, and she seemed to feel the same way about me. We took things slowly, languidly, embracing and kissing, massaging and exploring. Without the sense of anything being forced, exploration turned to stimulation, and stimulation turned to cries of passion, especially when my tongue revisited her remarkable nipples.

“I like your chest,” she sighed at one point afterwards, resting an ear and a cheek against it.

“I like yours. I’ve never known a woman who can come just through having her breasts played with. I didn’t expect that.”

“I’m an easy lay, I guess. You don’t even need to get in my pants to get in my pants.”

“I’m not going to lie, Coral. I think I’m in love with your tits.”

“What?” she questioned, bending an ear towards her twin wonders. “They just said that they’re in love with your tongue, so we’re even.”

We cuddled tighter, and might have fallen asleep once more if my stomach hadn’t begun to growl.

“We haven’t had breakfast or lunch,” she said. “Maybe we should shower and dress.”

“We have to?”

“I’ll need to go back home to walk Scarlet soon. Come home with me. I have some food there, and a really nice bed.”

We spent a good many hours in Coral’s bed that evening and night. Scarlet slept contentedly at the foot of the bed as we shook the mattress. She seemed completely unconcerned that the hands that fed her were wrapped around the cock of a near stranger, pumping him towards orgasm. Good dog.

In the middle of the night, I awakened from another dream where Coral and Mira were blended together into one woman. “You were having a dream,” Coral whispered, also awake. “You mumbled the word ‘moral’. What was that about?”

Moral — Christ, it was Mira plus Coral. I didn’t want to lie to her; nor could I confess the truth. “I was with you, but you were somehow two women rolled into one,” I half-explained.

“Typical Gemini dream,” she said. “The women are both aspects of you.”

“How does that work with Gemini’s? I’m supposed to be two different men living side by side in here?”

“Not quite. As I understand the sign, one twin lives here on the earthly plane while the other goes off on adventures, traveling through the heavens. When they switch places — which they do on occasion — they get to inform each other about what they discovered while they were in different places.”

“So it’s like exploring the universe and staying in place at the same time.”

“Stability on one plane and reckless excitement on the other. You get to learn about and communicate the hidden aspects of life, but at the price of being divided.”

“In my field, we believe that everybody is divided. Conscious and unconscious, Self and ego…”

“Well, Gemini’s are the poster-children. Even if you were whole, you’d be two.”

“Sounds like a curse.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Some really wonderful things come in twos.” Shifting her position with these words, she kneeled above me and lifted both perfect breasts in her small hands.

Too bad I only have one mouth. I fucking loved the feeling of Coral’s nipples between my lips. I worked them with my tongue, squeezed them and even brought my teeth to bear, just a little, just enough to hear her cries and moans escalate, her lower body beginning to press hard against me.

I flicked my fingers on her clit as I played with her tits, but I didn’t need to. What a fucking treasure — a woman whose nipples were on-switches for the mechanisms of orgasms. The naughty boy in me could imagine ambushing these tits in a dark movie theatre, making her cry out with my fingers not even smelling like pussy.

Coral blew me for the first time afterwards. Again, my cock looked gargantuan in proportion to her mouth, and there was no way she could take all of me inside. She made up for this with an uncanny sense of where to focus, and for how long. As with any new lover, I wondered whether she would swallow. She didn’t, but I couldn’t complain, as she drew me out and finished me off with her tits enveloping my slick cock. She couldn't surround my meat as excessively as Rosita, but a tit-fuck is a tit-fuck, and these were fucking goddess tits.

We slept the rest of the night with Coral's breasts in my hands, her ass pressed into my abdomen. The morning brought a lengthy walk of the dog before I had to return to the hotel, and the train ride back home. We said our good-byes at the corner of a misty city park, with much touching and very few words.

As I watched Coral walk away, her form dissolving into the mist, my heart felt light and heavy at the same time. I was obsessed with the tits, sure — who wouldn't be? But more than that, at least one twin inside was already in love with this woman.

Stability on one plane and reckless excitement on the other. Might be wonderful as a myth, but how did one work the two sides together in real life?