There are periods in one’s life where events appear to bend the fabric of time itself, creating space for the completion of a seemingly impossible number of tasks. Coral and I created three lists to help us address the sudden shift in the track of our lives — one for all she had to do, one for all I had to do, and a final list containing the tasks we could only accomplish together.

The most daunting on the third list turned out to be the quickest and easiest — finding and buying a home together. By luck it was a buyer’s market, and we scored an almost ideal Eastlake Victorian on the second day of searching, and placed a bid on it, which was accepted. It was only a ten minute walk to her campus, and a slightly longer walk or short metro ride to the hospital. Best of all, the house had a large second-floor room for Coral's art studio, and a nice penis-like spire, in which I had my office.

I called Carlotta, my receptionist, and gave her the news, promising to ease the upheaval of this move with a generous severance package. I also promised to find her a temporary position in another therapist’s office — temporary because I fully intended to hire Carlotta as my personal secretary once I was firmly entrenched in my new position. She absorbed all the news with the professional calm I’d come to expect, and expressed a willingness to move to stay with me.

With the week’s clients canceled, I stayed at Coral’s apartment the next five days, getting to know the city and becoming Scarlet’s father. I met some of Coral’s friends and colleagues, and even met the parents via web cam. Coral and I made love every night and nearly every morning, and it was grand.

Except for one thing. She never said it and I never asked, but all signs pointed to my fiancé having a thing about swallowing semen. She liked to suck my cock and she was very good at it, but every time I got close to ejaculation, she chose to finish me off somewhere else. I couldn’t really complain — Coral’s super-tight pussy grabbed and pulled the cum right out of me like no pussy I’d ever known, and she gave one hell of a tit-job, better than even Rosita, because she could orgasm from he act with naught but my hands rolling or pulling at her nipples. I loved the sex, and her smell, and every little thing about her body. I loved that it became “making love”, too, because the emotional bond was so strong. Still, it bugged me a little to think that I might never get a full-ride blowjob in his marriage. Then again, how many things are perfect? Even Eden had a conniving serpent, from what I hear.

On the temptation front, all of these unscheduled days up north were days that Mira could not drop in to fuck me, and I had to assume that her pussy was ready to go ballistic. She had no idea where I was, and I’d given her no warning that I would be away. On the fourth day I found a “Where are you, I need your cock!” e-mail sitting in my inbox, with a short video of Mira fingering her pussy, in close-up. The visuals were quite evocative, but the text was so short that I couldn’t tell which emotion predominated. Anger or desperation, I assumed, unless her lust wiped everything else out.

I didn’t respond. And when I returned home, I went so far as to rent a car, so I could pretend to still be away. Carlotta informed me that a Ms. Cassidy had been calling the office, anxious to know when I would return. Shit that I am, I told Carlotta to deflect any future calls from the persistent Ms. Cassidy. What I wanted, honestly, was for Mira to persist her way right into my trousers, especially with her hypnotized loins in this state of the most need ever. After fucking her one last time, I would give her the devastating news. The flaw in my desire was too apparent, though. Every hit of Mira’s sizzling wetness made it harder to let go, not easier. I was as full of Coral as I could be right now, and I had to use that to my advantage to resist Mira’s perfect thighs. It was time to make a stand, and I was finally going to make it.

Besides, I only had three weeks to pack up my old home and disassemble the office, and nothing could proceed without first solving the question of Mira. I’d placed myself in the position of having no choice, even if I lacked the resolve. It had to be done.

Which, I decided, required a little help from my friends, or at least from my best friend. I brought Grace up to speed on Coral over Vietnamese food at a favored restaurant, and her reaction to all the news was understandably mixed.

“I knew this would happen when I hooked you and Coral up, but I never thought you’d give up your practice for a salaried job!”

“That really offends you so much?”

“No, it’s not that. You’re a fucking brilliant therapist, Michael. It’s what you should be doing. This pain management stuff sounds important, but it’s a waste of your talent if you ask me.”

“The beauty is, I can slowly build a new practice up there if that’s what I want. I’m not quitting on my calling, Grace, just giving it another outlet for a time.”

“But you’re going to be five hours away, you fucker! This creates an unacceptable hole in my life — who will I have to pick on?”

“Me. It will just be harder to land the blows.”

“But…”

“I’ll give you a glowing recommendation as both a tormentor and stand-in conscience, Grace. You’ll have new victims in no time.”

“But no one will be as screwed-up as you are! It’s rare to find a Gemini therapist with a self-destruction streak like yours.”

“You’ll manage.”

”And a private wedding in fucking Las Vegas — will I at least get to see pictures of the event?”

“Better than that if you wish. We’d like to fly you there to meet us, and be a part of the ceremony.”

“You really do want me to be your best man, don’t you?”

“I do. We do. We’d be honored.”

“Her parents are okay with that?”

“I think they’ll be fine. Coral tells me that they’re rather conservative, but hands-off on the form of her life. Besides, you’ll charm the crap out of them.”

“Get me a hotel that has beautiful women with fake boobs hanging out at the pool all day. I look killer in a bikini with a tan, and I’ll be like Bigfoot when they see my tits are for real.”

“Will do. I also have another favor to ask of you. A really big one.”

“Uh-oh.”

“I haven’t told Mira yet.”

"About getting married?"

"About Coral at all."

“You’ve never stopped fucking Miss Torso, have you?”

“I tried, but… no.”

“I figured as much. And you want me stab you in the heart with these chopsticks for being an idiot and a slimy two-timing S.O.B.?”

“Easy now. What I want is for you to be with me when I give Mira the news.”

“Hold your hands to keep you from pulling your dick out to fuck her again, you mean.”

“Grace… I really do want to give her up. It’s completely settled, in my mind anyway. But she’s… I don’t think you understand how unstable she’s become about all of this. It might have started for her as a way to divert herself from an unhappy marriage, but she’s become obsessed with me.”

“I still think you have that backwards.”

“Listen to me. She’s fucking obsessed with me, and completely ga-ga over the sex we have together. I think she might go ballistic when I tell her, and I’m not talking about half an hour of insults and crying. I’m talking… I don’t even know what I’m talking. But it’s going to be bad, trust me. I don’t think she can be reasoned with. She believes she has ownership of my privates.”

"What did you do, sign a contract in blood together? Oh, right, not blood. You two probably gathered your..."

"Grace. A little help, please?"

“Fuck. What do I do, then? Stand by ready to dial 911, or feed you your lines so you’ll finally get up the nerve to do what you should have done weeks ago?”

“I just want a witness there, just in case. She needs to know that I’m serious. She needs to know that it’s over.”

Grace did not look happy, like the problems in my life were giving her indigestion. “How many fucking secrets do I have to keep for you, Michael? What am I supposed to say to Coral if Mira gives her a call and describes your dick in minute detail, and tells her you’ve been fucking behind your Lady Love’s back the whole time you’ve known her?”

“I don’t think Mira will do that. Maybe I’m crazy, but it just isn’t her style.”

“And if you’re wrong? I won’t keep lying to protect you, and you’d be a dick to ask me to.”

“If I’m wrong I promise to deal with it all by myself, Grace. I’ll tell Coral everything, and hope she’ll have it in herself to forgive me.”

“Throw yourself at her mercy. Is that what you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Your sins might be unforgivable in her eyes, and who could blame her? You might lose her and have to live with the regrets for the rest of your life.”

“I’m only trying to create a fresh start, Grace. If it isn’t possible and Coral ends up hating me… Well then, I’ll have to live with that, like you said. But I really feel that we have a chance, and I want that chance, for both of us.”

“Maybe you do have a conscience in there somewhere. A small one, to be sure, but… Okay, okay. So when does all this ugliness with Mira take place? Am I on-call, or you’ve scheduled the whole thing?”

“She has a cell phone now, and I called her right before coming here. She’s… It’s been a week since we… did it. I think she’s pretty overworked.”

“Crazy horny, you mean. Ready to perform a frenetic modern dance right on the tip of your pole.”

“Right. I had no trouble getting her to commit to coming by the house tomorrow evening after her dance class. She’s a mess. I don’t think I’ve ever heard so much need in her voice.”

“So Miss Torso will be in leotards and all sweaty with her pussy already gushing. Maybe I’ll go off script and offer my tongue to her cunt as a stand-in for your dick. I’ve never quite gotten over the thought of how fine those thighs must be, even with Lucinda as my lover. Besides, I’m probably much better at eating pussy than you’ll ever be. I’ll bet you haven’t even found Mira’s clitoris yet.”

“You want Mira? Go for it, Grace. Please. I’d… actually be happy if that worked.”

“You really are ready to give her up, aren’t you? You aren’t shitting me.”

“I’m ready. I’m in love with Coral.”

“Yes, well, I’ll have to collect my fee someday for that one.”

“You’ll come by the house tomorrow around seven?”

“I’ll come. But you two had better not start fucking in front of me, or I swear I’ll slice your dick off to avenge Coral.”

“Thank you, Grace. I love you, you know.”

“Yes, I know. I love you too. I guess I’ve always had a thing for men with tiny dicks and even tinier consciences.”

I can’t really say what I expected the showdown with Mira to be like, other than painfully intense. We hadn’t gone this long without fucking since I’d juiced her system with the immersion commands, and I could only imagine that state she must be in. Which made me hard as stone every time I thought about it, dammit. I love my dick, but it was definitely slow to get with the new program.

I spent half of that day making calls to clients at the office, letting them know personally of my coming move, and making arrangements to shift those who wanted to continue therapy into the arms of trusted colleagues. I arrived back home in the early afternoon in my own car and spent my time keeping busy, ignoring the butterflies in my stomach as I packed books and clothes into boxes.

I was taking a definite risk by having Grace there. Mira could blow up and shove the threesome with Lucinda in Grace’s face just to score points, if she wished, tearing a friendship apart even as I tried to tear her away from me. I questioned why I would take such a chance — was I willing to sacrifice Grace to gain my freedom? The answer had to be yes in one way, but not really. It wasn’t Mira’s style to do something like that, and I wasn’t secretly hoping for it. I just needed Grace’s support, and her stability to lean on. Things like this are what friends are for.

Grace arrived promptly at seven that evening, and I had her park her car down the street so Mira would not know beforehand that she was here. We sat at my dining room table, Grace sipping hot tea while I fortified my resolve with two shots of brandy.

I believe that Grace was genuinely shocked by Mira’s entrance. It had always gotten me instantly hard, the way Mira swept into the house as though bringing fierce sexual winds along with her, and this time she was a category five, the sex just whirling out from her in all directions. She had probably worn a skirt over her leotards on the drive to my house, but it had been ditched at some point along the way. Mira entered the front door without knocking, every inch of her sculpted body sheathed in form-fitting, physique-enhancing black. She was a dead ringer for the best-looking pussy-burglar in the world, intent on stealing cum in the night. I could tell that her intense heat lit a corresponding fire inside of Grace, because Mira was horny in a way that was infectious. I couldn’t be immune to it, and neither could Grace, although she tried to hide it.

“Oh!” Mira exclaimed, pausing in mid-stride just inside the door. I had made a point of never having dinner guests or anyone else over since we’d begun our sex thing, meaning Mira had never seen another person in my house, even once.

“We’re having some tea!” Grace brightly exclaimed, surprising me with her quick recovery. “Come join us, Mira. Michael has something he needs to tell you.”

Mira turned her head and saw the boxes. There were a few seconds where it felt as though anything could happen, and then she smiled a pleasant false smile, and came over to us, giving Grace a small hug and seeking out my eyes. The color of Mira’s eyes shifted to a green that positively blazed with hot fury, though her body remained completely relaxed, perfectly at ease. I assumed that her dance training was kicking in to give the illusion of calm she wished to create. Underneath… God knows what, although I could smell her wet pussy without half trying.

“So you’re moving,” Mira stated, taking the chair beside Grace. “And Grace is here because you think I’ll be upset, is that it?”

“It’s more than that, Mira. I’m, um… I’m getting married.”

Her hands were clasped together on the table and I saw her fingers twitch involuntarily. Other than that, no reaction.

“I’m going to put on more hot water and let you two say what you need to say,” Grace delivered in casual tones. She never looked at me but I could read her perfectly anyway. She had my back, if I needed it.

“So… how long have you known this lucky mystery woman?” Mira asked, her eyes boring into mine.

“A little over a month,” I admitted.

“A month. And already the wedding bells. She must be beautiful. She must be really special.”

“She is,” I conceded. “I… kept wanting to tell you…”

“I see. Perhaps if I hadn’t forced my body onto you every second we were together, you might have said something earlier.”

I really didn’t care whether Mira faulted me for not telling her before. I cared about what she would do, and how bad it would be.

“It must have been hard,” she said to fill the tense silence.

“It was,” I replied, misreading her.

“I’ll bet it’s hard right now. I know exactly how hard it is right now.”

My breath caught. “Mira… don’t.”

“But I’m right, aren’t I? I make you hard even when you’re telling me all this. You can’t be near me and not get hard.”

I said nothing.

“I’m making you hard even when you’re afraid of me. In fact, that’s probably molten for you. It ups the intensity even further, and you can’t resist intensity, can you Michael?”

“Should I be afraid, Mira? I really do care about you. I wish we could…”

“Oh stop. Don’t turn this into a weeper.” She smiled oddly, and stood. “How far away are you moving? Don’t tell me you’re relocating to Europe or India to keep yourself from needing to fuck me.”

“Not that far,” I answered. “But far enough.”

“I’ll bet she’s really beautiful,” she repeated.

“She is,” I repeated back.

“I don’t care how gorgeous she is, she’ll never be able to give you sex the way I can.”

I couldn’t answer. Sex with Coral was nearly perfect, but sex with Mira was probably beyond perfect. I knew it and she knew it, but I wasn’t going to concede the point.

“Good luck to you both,” Mira said, spinning on her heels to make her way to the door.

“Wait!” I said, and she halted in the living room. “That’s it?”

I hoped she didn’t interpret the question as a plea to keep the sexual tension going. The thing was, I couldn’t let her leave without knowing how she was taking this, and what kind of thoughts or plans were running through her hypnotized mind. She appeared to be reluctantly coming to terms with this, yet underneath, the immersion commands lurked.

Mira regarded me for a second, her expression unreadable. She looked like she was listening to something — her interior thoughts, perhaps. She licked her lips, and closed her eyes, just before one of her hands almost casually began to creep down, and between her thighs. Her head tilted, and I might have heard a soft sigh as she began to stroke her pussy through the thin leotards. Her eyes opened again, unfocused, and she took on the appearance I loved to see so much, the total wanton sex kitten completely lost in a fog of hypnotized animal lust. Her hips slowly swayed and I could watch her nipples hardening right through the black of the leotards. She wasn’t faking her excitement, and looked like she would be on the floor moaning and gushing with a dozen more strokes.

“Oh God!” she cried out, breaking the odd silence. “You can’t even imagine… what this pussy feels like after not having you for a week, Michael. Every day, every minute… it just gets hotter, and hotter…”

And after a month, my mind couldn’t help continuing. Or after a year…

Mira did not dissolve into a writhing puddle on my living room floor, although I wanted to see that. With shocking and disorienting speed, she snapped out of her finger fantasy, and reached out to hold on to a table for stability. With her equilibrium returning, she regarded me with determined eyes. “I’ll let your dick determine whether that’s it or not,” she said, finally answering my question. “You have all the answers you need straining at your pants.”

I knew what I was doing when I surreptitiously inched my chair closer to the table.

She laughed. "I can feel how hard you are for me, even from here." And then she cupped her breasts, aiming them at me, and stuck out her tongue, wiggling it like school chlldren do. The gesture wasn’t offensive for some reason. It made my hard dick even harder.

And then she was gone. I sat at the table in stunned silence, until Grace emerged from the kitchen with two large glasses of brandy.

“That was weird,” I said, breathing heavily.

“That was fucking Vesuvian! I feel like I have hot ashes ready to blow out my cunt!”

“I don’t even know what just happened, Grace.”

“Good God, that woman is fucking hot! I forgive you a tiny bit for continuing to do her all this time. She’s… incredible!”

“She was incredible. No longer.”

“I saw her little masturbation dance, and it was all I could do not to help her get off. Jesus Christ her thighs make me horny! I love Lucinda, but I really believe Mira must have the sexiest thighs in the whole fucking world! She looked like she could fuck us both, and make us beg her to stop. And I never beg someone to stop.”

“Grace…”

“Wanna fuck, Michael? I can’t remember the last time I felt this horny. Let’s go up to your bedroom and...”

“Grace… Please.”

“Okay, okay. Bad joke. But I know I’m not the only one needing sex right now. She was right, wasn’t she?”

“About what?”

“Your dick is totally hard for her under the table, isn’t it?”

“No,” I lied. “It’s not. I really think I’m past all of this.”

She regarded me, either with skepticism or admiration. Funny that I couldn’t tell the difference. “Here’s to your limp dick and your happy marriage, then,” Grace said, raising her glass. “You and Coral have a bright future awaiting you after all. Unless your equipment is totally broken.”

I felt as though a great weight had been lifted after that, even if Mira had made me hard. I still didn’t have a clue what she would do or not do, but the weeks of reorganizing and packing my life went by without incident, meaning not one single visit, no sexy videos or even a phone call. It might be hard as hell for her with the immersion commands simmering in her psyche, but she could stay away. Maybe it was willpower. Maybe he was screwing somebody else like crazy, perhaps even Taylor. Who knew? I wasn't my problem now.

I didn’t obsess over Mira, because there was so much to do. It quickly became clear that it would not be as easy selling my old house as buying the new one. The same market forces that gave us the Victorian so easily would make unloading this Cape Cod a slow process, and we’d be lucky to get anything near its real value. It didn’t really matter — between our two salaries and what I’d saved over the past few years, we could wait things out or lower the price, whatever made the most sense.

My humble home began to look stuffed to the gills once I emptied closets and the basement into boxes, piling everything in the living and dining rooms. It made me uncomfortable, seeing how much unnecessary stuff I could accumulate if I didn’t consciously work to thwart my collecting instincts. Many of my kitchen things were useless in Coral’s eyes, as she had been gathering gourmet apparatus for years. Forgoing a yard sale, I gathered a small truckload of stuff for charity. I hated to part with the beanbag chair Mira and I had fucked in so many times, but it eventually went to the dump — it smelled too much like her needy pussy to give away, no matter how many times I tried to clean it.

Taking the office apart was more emotional than with the house, because it meant the letting go of so many clients I’d been helping for months or even years. It also meant the end, for now, of my relationship with Carlotta. The parts of my office that I cared about most — the client records and my papers — had already been shipped north, while the office furniture and equipment were sitting in my living room. I took Carlotta out for lunch the day before the moving van would arrive, where I gave her a five thousand dollar loyalty check on top of the severance arrangement. She had several upcoming interviews with therapist friends, and I had no doubt that she’d be running a new office as soon as she wished.

I went back to the office after lunch, just to say good-bye to it. This space and the adjoining one to the left would be merged to become a dentist’s office, I’d heard. The floors were stripped down to their bare wood, and nothing but a couple of pieces of stray office furniture remained piled near the front door, awaiting pick-up for charity.

I walked into the back room, oddly dark and small without lighting and furniture. So many people had entrusted me with their most difficult secrets in this room. I had cured some, and empowered others to continue facing themselves. The clients who would continue with other professionals might walk in the direction of permanent healing, or they might not. Some people can remake themselves, and with that, their lives. For others, the most that can be hoped for is a temporary respite from compulsive behaviors, and the time to glimpse what their lives might have been if they could behave normally. Then, like a tide washing in to pull us back where we must go, the addictions or the complexes take hold once again, and sweep the fragile healing away.

Rosita Bello had found healing here. Healing and compulsive sex. I'd hypnotized Lucinda here, too, and of course Mira. This room had eventually become filled with my secrets. It was good that I was letting it go.

“It all started right here,” Mira’s voice echoed in the bare space, making me jump. She was at the open door between the reception area and my office, staring intently at the spot on the floor where she had stood the first time we’d kissed.

I tried to look calm, but the fact was that her presence made my brain go haywire. Was this an ambush, or a final assault where she’d throw herself on me and start stroking my dick to hardness, hiking up her skirt and…

“Relax. This is just a trip down memory lane, nothing more.”

She walked farther into the room, her heels loud on the uncovered floor. A thin overcoat covered most of her body, thank God, but her calves in sheer stockings were enough to remind me of all that I was giving up by ending this.

“So your fiancé’s name is Coral,” she said to the ceiling, creating a chill in my spine. “Lucinda got the name from Grace, if you’re wondering how I know that.”

“I… did wonder,” I said, finding my voice.

“I’m not stalking her, if that’s what you feared.”

I couldn’t think of anything positive to say, especially when I wondered whether Mira had been stalking me. It couldn’t be a coincidence that we had arrived here at the same time.

“It’s still mine,” Mira mumbled in a low voice.

“What is?”

“Your cock. You promised it to me and it’s fucking mine.”

She wasn’t doing anything, just standing there not looking at me. Even so I could feel her heat, her intense sexuality, radiating out through the overcoat, beginning to fill the empty room.

“It can’t be yours any longer, Mira,” I answered, my voice sounding hollow, like the room. My cock was already half-stiff, which I imagined she already knew somehow. When would my prick ever get the fucking memo?

“I can’t live with that outcome, Michael. I can’t live without your cock. My life is meaningless without fucking you.”

Straight from the immersion playbook, which instantly brought me to full erection. “That’s pretty melodramatic, don’t you think?” I bluffed.

She smiled an unreadable smile, still avoiding my eyes. “If you had to live with this pussy for a few days, you wouldn’t say that. You’d probably be screaming and clawing right now, to get what you need so badly.”

“Mira…”

“You should applaud my ability to restrain myself, Michael. I could be raping you right now."

Would I fight her if she tried? Or would I welcome it, and find myself raping her back?

"You aren’t half as strong as I am, Michael. We both know that.”

“Look, Mira… What we had was beautiful, but it wasn’t even a real relationship. We’ve barely even talked for the past few months. Did you even realize that?”

“I heard your voice exactly the way I wanted to hear it. Every time.”

“You don’t even know how I’m taking my techniques into the area of pain management. It works, and it might work for you. If you’d let me put you in the immersion state again, I might…”

“Put myself in your hands? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes. I really believe I could help you to get over…”

“All wrong!” she exploded. “Your cock needs to be in my hands, not the other way around!”

“Just listen to yourself! Somewhere along the way you became obsessed with me, or addicted to the sex, or…”

“You think I’m like your patients, don’t you? You think I’m an addict.”

“Yes, I do.” And I knew I was right, because I had made her that way.

Her laugh was almost silent. “Physician heal thyself!“ she quoted in a sarcastic tone. “You need all of this just as badly as I need you.”

“Listen to me, Mira. I could help, I really could. All you’d need to do…”

She waved her arms, urging me to silence. “You really don’t understand anything, do you?” she asked. “Do you really expect me to believe that I’m the only one tortured by what you’re doing? Your cock is fucking mine, Michael, and not only because I have to have it. It needs me! Pretend all you want — go try to have a fairy tale life with your piece of Coral and see how long it takes before you’re aching for me the way I ache for you.”

“Mira… It’s over. We can never…”

“It isn’t over. I found a way to have you when I was married. You’ll have to find a way to do the same.”

“I would never do that to Coral. I just wouldn’t.”

Her eyes went dark at that, and I knew why. Without really intending to, I’d implied that I could take a higher road than she had, treating a marriage with respect where she hadn’t. Which was going to be true, only I had no scheming therapist undermining my psyche at every turn, eventually tricking me into becoming addicted to sex with an illicit lover. Mira didn’t know these things, at least not consciously. But somewhere, locked deep and irretrievable in some corner of her psyche, she was aware. Even when we can’t find our truth, it lies inside, calling.

“You can’t be in the same room as this body and not get hard,” I barely heard her whisper.

She knew the truth of that, yes. I stood there with my heart racing, my pulse audible to my ears, wondering if she would force herself on me, or start begging, or boil over in a way I’d never seen. Instead, she slowly turned her back to me, as if I were no longer there. I thought for a few seconds that she was going to walk out, but she just stood there, motionless.

“This is where it all began,” she softly stated once again, looking down at a spot on the floor where the clients’ couch used to be. “This is where my body first came to life. All those years of dancing, thinking that my body had become a perfect instrument, thinking that I knew my capabilities. I had no idea how much energy is inside me, aching to be released. I didn’t even know that the most important part of my body was sound asleep. And Michael awakened it, right here. I followed Michael’s voice, and everything blossomed inside me, bursting with life…”

The entire scene was eerie. She wasn’t staring at the spot where we had first kissed, but where she had lain with my voice pouring immersion commands into her psyche, shaping drives and igniting repressed fires for my sexual benefit. I didn’t know whether she was talking to me anymore, or even knew what she was saying. Her arms were tight to her body, and though I couldn’t see for certain, I was fairly sure that one or both hands had gravitated between her thighs when she’d said, “Michael awakened it, right here.”

Perhaps it was the fact that I couldn’t read her right now that brought to mind how this had all started with the "art of following”. I’d used my insights into Mira’s psyche to determine her weaknesses, and undermine them at every turn to score her unattainable pussy. It had felt so natural, almost like it wasn’t even a choice, but an inescapable pathway, the road I couldn’t help but take.

I wasn’t doing the same with Coral, too, was I? I’d found her weak point, her fear of betrayal, and had worked hard to present myself as a super-committed partner. That much was clearly false. But it didn’t have to remain a lie, or some self-serving Gemini tactic, if I could put all these psychological and immersion manipulations behind me. I could be the faithful man Coral needed me to be, my ability to intuit and move with her needs aiding our relationship, as opposed to gaming it.

But I had to move past Mira first, and the time was now. My eyes lowered and I tried to keep myself from drinking in the fabulous form of her calves one last time, and failed. I could so easily imagine her turning around and reaching out to me, as her hand had reached out that first day in this very office. I had reached out in return, meeting her need, and I thought I understood all that it signified. How could I have known that in taking that first step, a host of dark truths would emerge where I discovered how far I would go and could go in manipulating a woman like Mira Cassidy for sex?

Part of me wanted to apologize to her, although I couldn’t. It would be false anyway, because most of me, including everything connected to the dick part, still ached to fuck her, and I knew I always would. There really was nothing more to say if our bodies were not going to carry on the conversation. There was only the simultaneous promise and loss in the moving on.

Because I was half-lost in thought, it took a moment for me to realize that Mira was shrugging the overcoat from her shoulders, and letting it fall to the floor. I needed to run, but my feet wouldn’t move. With her back still turned to me, she began to undress. The heels went first, and then her blouse. It wasn’t a striptease — I couldn’t even tell if it was for my benefit or involved me at all. When Mira lost the skirt and stood there in nothing but nylons and a bra with her clothes in a pile at her feet, my cock felt like it wanted to bounce off the walls a thousand times to build up enough crazy energy to plunge into her cunt at light speed, igniting forces beyond the natural reach of human beings. My Coral was so beautiful, a real treasure, but Mira Cassidy was a fucking physical miracle, and the miracle ached for me.

I needed to get the hell away from there, but my feet refused to move. I looked at Mira’s body, drinking it in, and I could only think: This can’t be the last time. I somehow resisted the urge to go up to her and press my hard cock into her backside. Finding a resolve in me that felt nearly miraculous, I quietly shifted towards the door, intending to slink out of her life unseen, even as my eyes felt glued to the wonders of Mira’s body.

I was almost at the outer door when I heard her first moan. It was sharp, and completely uninhibited. It was unlikely that anyone would interrupt Mira as she descended into whatever masturbatory reverie had seized her, and I think she honestly didn’t care whether she got caught in the act or not.

The familiar sounds of Mira at full boil echoed through the abandoned office as I closed the door. It killed me to hear her getting off when I wasn’t touching her somewhere, but I ignored the wishes of my hard-on, running to my car and hiding in a hotel room on my final night in this city. The city where Mira lived. The city I was fleeing to have a chance at a normal life, where I could begin to live truthfully with the woman I loved, rather than constantly building web after tangled web of compounding lies.

I knew from my profession that most people never see, without help, how their lives and sense of well-being are based upon countless deceptions of all sizes. We protect ourselves from the truth at nearly every turn, because the truth usually hurts. We criticize politicians for their incessant “spinning”, and shake our heads at the foibles of celebrities in the tabloids, certain in our minds that we would never behave like that.

Only we do, almost always.

I knew all that I had done. I wasn’t fooling myself by pretending that I had been any kind of hero in hypnotizing these women for sex over the past many months. And I would never be able to live a wholly truthful life again, not after all I had done. I could never tell Coral or anyone else the whole truth of my time here, but I could do my best to use these same insights and techniques to benefit people and heal them, as I’d intended when becoming a therapist to begin with.

It’s better to light a candle than curse the darkness, the saying goes. In many ways I had been living with darkness draped all over me, but no longer. Coral was my light. How I felt about her was my light.

I called my sweetheart before going to bed. The day had me feeling quiet and pensive, while she couldn’t even come close to containing her excitement at my imminent return.

“You’re my bright light,” I whispered over the line, my eyes tearing up. “I love you so much.”

“Whisper that into my ear when you’re inside of me tomorrow night,” she answered, and I promised I would.

I slept without dreams that night, surprising given the immensity of the changes the next day signified. I called the moving company first thing in the morning and it was all confirmed that they would have the house emptied out by the middle of the afternoon. I was already a visitor here, because my life was elsewhere.

Checking my e-mail at a nearby coffee house, I found the link to a new Rosita video waiting for me. As I was sitting in a corner with little chance of others seeing my computer screen, I angled my laptop and turned the sound off, and clicked the link. An energetic striptease this time, with tons of familiar gyrating action around a gleaming pole. “Rose Bloom” lightly mouthed my name twice in this video, and might have again if the camera hadn’t remained focused on her dripping cunt during orgasm.

Once again I was hard, and hiding my erection under a table. A few minutes later, as I browsed through news headlines, another e-mail arrived. The hairs on my arms stood on end when I saw that it was from Mira, with the heading: The Truth.

As the night follows the day, my pussy follows your cock, because one cannot exist without the other. I don’t care whether you think you believe this or not. Your cock already knows the truth.