I had thought, when deciding to use the immersion technique on Mira and Lucinda and Rosita, that I would be able to do an about-face when necessary, gathering the resolve to zip up my pants and turn towards the sun. I’d already proven to myself, by sending Lucinda’s quivering cunt back into Grace’s arms, that I could rise above greed for greed’s sake. I’d fucked the women I wanted to fuck, and fucked them pretty much the way I wanted to fuck them. I hadn’t managed to orchestrate a threesome involving Grace, but the consolation prize was a tag-team match with Lucinda and Mira — only a complete control-freak could complain, and I wasn’t complaining. I’d lived out my threesome fantasy and others, to a degree I wouldn’t have thought possible when all of this began. I’d gotten my hypno-jollies, and now I could move on.

Only when I tried to place a big red “X” on the lovely Rosita, I discovered that I couldn’t resist fudging the immersion commands that might have completely restored her autonomy. I had every reason to drive her from my life, and the fact that I couldn’t summon the strength to do it placed an uncomfortable question right in front of my face: Had I become an addict?

The irony — given my professional expertise in the subject — didn’t make me smile, or cry for that matter. I’m trained to observe without passion, and to avoid judgment. I took the possibility and turned it over and over in my mind, seeing what I could see while having to admit the existence of much that would forever remain invisible. It’s a given in my field that no psychologist can properly diagnose and treat their own psyche. The human mind cannot regard itself without bias — for objective truth, a view from the outside is always required. Even when knowing this, I peered down my own rabbit hole as best I could. Yes, I had begun to behave much like an addict. What I couldn’t quite decipher, however, was the exact nature of my addiction, and how deep it went. If I needed a “fix” of something, what was it that I had become addicted to — the sex, the women, the deceptions or the power?

When working with clients, no real progress can be made until the source of a craving is identified. A husband who can’t stop cheating on his wife, for example, might have a straightforward addiction to sex, or to certain sexual acts. It’s equally possible, however, that the real addiction can be traced to a need for lying, or to the thrill of tempting fate, or to an unconscious wish to be found out and punished. In such a case, the particulars — the identity of the sexual partner, and the lascivious acts that comprise the infidelity — may be almost beside the point, no more than a bit of sex-gravy garnishing the meat of the problem. There are direct, anatomically measurable addictions in life — nicotine and heroin being prime examples, where a chemical gains control of pleasure receptors in the brain — but most of the addictions I worked with were behavioral in nature, with hidden underpinnings. Weight issues, for instance, were frequently about a lack of love or self-respect, almost never stemming from an outright love of calories. With subtle probing, I could often uncover the problems hiding beneath other problems, where real work and healing could take place.

I needed to know why, when the moment came to do the right thing, I was unable to completely release Rosita Bello from my hypnotic grip. Without understanding what prevented me from concluding — in the usual sense of that word — our very dangerous affair, I’d never be able to clean up my act enough to enjoy a healthy relationship with someone like Coral Brackedge.

Later that night after the all-important dinner with Grace and Coral, I fucked Rosita with a vengeance. I saw that night of mega-controlling lovemaking as being like the conclusion of a fireworks display, the mad rush to go out with a crowd-pleasing bang. Only after my dick felt almost raw, my balls like emptied canisters that might never be refilled, did I trust myself enough to work on her in the immersion state. Sitting in a chair pulled beside her bed, I stuck to the plan, removing her need for the regular Tuesday “appointments” in my office.

The personal issues that had initially driven Rosita to my office and couch were, in fact, a thing of the past. I could be confident that cocaine would no longer tempt her, and I was almost one hundred percent certain that I could, by uttering the correct words, set her on a path towards happiness in some future, emotionally healthy relationship. I could picture it all in my mind like a scene from a movie — me holding Rosita’s troubled yet trusting psyche like a white dove in my hands, and making the sweeping, opening motion that would set it free, flying up and away towards the light.

It was a great image, and the correct goal, only I couldn’t do it. Rosita lay before me on her bed, essentially in profile. A sheet covered her body from the abdomen down, and I watched her big breasts as they rose and fell with her steady breathing, and tried to recapture the sense that she was a woman to be helped, rather than secretly exploited. Her breasts were magnificent as always, perhaps even more beautiful to me with their creamy expanse marred by cum-stains and sweat. Staring at them, I imagined myself one year in the future, no longer having a backstage pass into Rosita’s mind or bed, her amazing figure no more than a fading memory.

I could feel the right thing to do — it wasn’t merely some idea of right and wrong, some abstraction about moral duty, and therapeutic responsibility. The pain of giving up what I had acquired came with the territory — I had known the relationship would have to end even as I’d created her needs. Now the moment of truth had arrived. I needed to let her go, completely.

The idea that flashed through my mind probably wouldn’t have appeared if not for Mira, and her teasing sex films. How Rosita appeared to me actually changed, right there in an instant. I suddenly saw her in crisper detail, as though my eyes had become more refined lenses, able to record more physical thrills than I’d previously known to look for. I found my eyes easing down the planes of her face, following the dip of the chin, and on down until I came to the precipitous rise of her mighty breasts. Astonishingly, I became hard again. Entranced by the wonders of her form, I got up and gently pulled the sheet away, completely uncovering her. I moved to stand at the foot of her bed, viewing her body from a new angle, and leaned in, imagining a rectangular border framing my view of Rosita’s red and swollen pussy.

She would look great on film. She would look great plunging a dildo in and out of that deep cunt, dreaming of me. I knew right then, with my cock tingling towards hardness once more, that I couldn’t throw Rosita into the wastebasket marked “The Irrevocable Past” There were options that would hold her at arms length, where she could tease my cock from a safe distance. She could be held in reserve, a great fuck with great tits sitting tight in case life changed in unexpected ways, and I needed to fuck her again.

Leaving her uncovered, I sat back down and weighed this new alternative. It fit my need for self-protection, and there might be financial benefits for Rosita, too. Seeing no lurking dangers, I went halfway with her, reworking the hypnotic suggestions enough to protect myself, while leaving thrilling cracks through which I could retain a piece of her even when absent.

“You have been so lucky, Rosita. You came to Michael to cure an addiction to cocaine, and you have completely succeeded.”

“Yesss…”

“And you’ve received more from the experience than you ever could have dreamed. It has been so satisfying, making love to a kind and intelligent man like Michael.”

“Mmmmnnnn… ohyesss…”

“You are very lucky, Rosita. You feel beautiful, and confident, and strong.”

“Strong…”

“Strong enough to face the fact that the current rhythms of your life must change.”

“C…change…”

“Yes, change. It is now time for a change in your patterns of behavior. It’s time for the next chapter.”

“Chap… ter…”

“It will suddenly dawn on you that you no longer need to continue seeking therapy from Michael. He has cured you of your addiction to cocaine, which was your original goal.”

“Yes”

“You can end your therapy now, Rosita. Your sessions with Michael have become more about sexual fulfillment than curing your addictive behavior. You can end your sessions with Michael. You no longer need them.”

“But… Michael’s cock…”

“Yes, you have desired Michael’s cock. You have craved it. The feelings of excitement and satisfaction when making love to Michael have, in some ways, become the focus of your life.”

“Focus…”

“Yes, focus, Rosita. Focus on this voice, and where it is leading you. Your desperate weekly need for Michaels’s cock will subside…”

“No!”

“Yes. Michael has been your therapist, and your kind-hearted lover. But this arrangement, beautiful as it is, remains dangerous for Michael. Others would never understand it, and never approve. You have known from the beginning, deep down, that you will eventually have to give Michael up, to protect him.”

“No! I… can’t!”

“Michael has helped you in so many compassionate ways. But now that you no longer need therapy, you see that it is best to protect Michael’s reputation, by keeping some distance between you.

“I… But…”

“Yes, it will be painful, for both of you. Sometimes doing the right thing, the correct and loving thing, hurts. But there is a way to ease the pain. A way to know that you are pleasing Michael, even from a distance.”

She remained silent, waiting to absorb it.

“You love to please men with your beautiful body, Rosita. Dancing at the club is more than money to you. You feel desired. You feel special.”

“Yes…”

“You could please Michael from a distance, Rosita. You could please him, and tease his cock hard, by making your beautiful body available to him through the internet.”

She was silent for a few seconds, but then she licked her lips, and one of her hands shifted, fingertips on a hardening nipple.

“You’ve thought of this before, haven’t you, Rosita? Showing your beautiful body on the internet. Teasing men like Michael, your special breasts filling a computer screen.”

“Uh-huh…” she whispered, both nipples now receiving attention.

I had a fell-fledged erection again, which almost seemed like a miracle after all the night’s sex. And as I remembered from my childhood, God does not like it when His miracles are ignored. I began to lightly stroke my cock as I continued the instructions.

“Your cravings for Michael’s cock will not disappear, Rosita, but they will change. You need to keep your distance from Michael, but you can also rejoice in the opportunity to fuck him from a distance. Become a model for a high-end porn site, Rosita. Make it your new mission, to fuck Michael regularly through his computer monitor. Use the body that he loves so much to make him hard. Use your special breasts to drive him crazy from afar. Make him need to see you again, and fuck you again, sometime in the future.”

“Yes, yes…” she breathed, massaging her breasts vigorously.

“Imagine how delicious it will feel to strip for a movie camera, or masturbate right in front of it, all for the purpose of making Michael hard for you. Imagine the orgasms you could have, teasing Michael that way, while knowing that he’s masturbating, too.”

“Ohhhhh…”

“Incredible orgasms, Rosita. Because you would know that Michael is masturbating while viewing your films. That he can’t help but masturbate when viewing your films, because he’ll know that you’re still fucking him, and working to make him come, again and again.”

“Oh! Oh yes, Michael!”

What I had dreaded earlier in the night — this process of giving Rosita up — had me hard as hell now. For her part, Rosita was touching herself with a fury that I’d never seen, not while she was in the immersion state. What I wanted was meeting a powerful fantasy deep in Rosita’s psyche. She had thought of this before — getting men hard via the web, I was certain of it. And since our desires were in such agreement here, it would be a crime to not exploit the dynamic for all it was worth.

“When you open your eyes again,” I added, stroking my dick, “you will give Michael a tit-job that will burn your image into his mind forever. Make this last in-person fuck the kind of fuck that Michael will never forget, Rosita. Make this the kind of fuck that you keep in your mind and your body forever.”

She was as I’d never seen her when she came out of the trance. She didn’t just need me, and desire me. She didn’t plead for me, or beg me to drive my cock into her. No, this was different. Pleasing me with the visuals of her gorgeous body had become her mission now, and it showed in the way she moved, and the poses she struck, and the look she fixed on me as she surrounded my throbbing meat with her enveloping tits.

Rosita’s eyes bore into me, and perhaps even then she could imagine me in front of a glowing computer monitor. She seemed to look right through me as she tit-fucked me into coming. Was he, in a sense, already performing for a camera lens, my lust reflected in its glassy stare?

The real performance, however, was mine, as we dressed in the morning. Rosita spoke gently, reassuringly, when she informed me that she needed a time-out from this relationship. I did my best to look crushed, which became nearly impossible when she began feeding me my own twisted hypno-logic, almost word for word. Her big-titted cluelessness made me hard as hell, so I ripped her clothing off one last time, directing her to the pole downstairs. I left her house in the late morning, with Rosita laying flat on her back on the floor, looking like the cum-stained hypno-whore she would always be.

They say that breaking up is hard to do. Maybe it is, almost always. Not with Rosita, though. Breaking up with Rosita was simply hardening.

I called Coral the next evening, and it was so wonderful that it was horrible. She was charming, and witty, and the woman knew all about subtlety, and how to flirt on the phone without it feeling cloying or forced. She told me about the class she’d taught that day, describing the clever ego-sidestepping strategies she employed with her “problem” students, the little tricks she’d developed to turn a lack of talent or confidence into quirky expressiveness that could find its way onto a canvas. I listened, every word drawing me in a little further, picturing the way her blue eyes must be opening wide here and there as she spoke. Her emotional intelligence was off the charts, her physical beauty still vivid in my memory, and I felt my heart opening naturally, instinctively, as a morning glory opens to the dawn.

She had psychological flaws — they weren’t apparent, but everybody has flaws and scars, they’re part of the human condition. But the fact that I just had to assume their presence, rather than seeing them, almost scared me.

When we rang off, I sat in my rocking chair, just watching the evening light fade to black in the living room. I wanted a beer, but I didn’t get one. I was hungry, but the thought of food didn’t appeal to me. I was in trouble. I was in real trouble, and I knew it.

The professional train wreck had been avoided — Grace had provided the shock that lit a fire under my butt, to take necessary career-saving steps with Rosita. At the same time, she had introduced an element into my life that could not be there, not without creating other future catastrophes. I couldn’t go on behaving as I had been, not if I wanted a real relationship. And after only two conversations with Coral Brackedge, I knew that I wanted one. In fact, I already felt that I was in the middle of one.

The phone rang, and I picked it up, hoping and fearing that it would be Mira.

“She really digs you,” Grace declared. “Coral gave me the biggest hug at the train station last night. I felt like I’d never been thanked so much or so sincerely in my life, even though she never said a word. She’s into you, Michael. You need to call her, and get this thing going for real.”

“I just talked to her.”

“Good boy.”

I didn’t say anything.

“And? Am I going to be your best man someday? I look hot in a tux.”

“You’re getting way ahead of events, Grace. She is nice, though.”

“Nice? You saw those tits, or enough of them to know that we’re talking more than ‘nice’! If I wasn’t so deliriously happy with Lucinda, I’d be trying to marry her myself!”

“Sooo… You never considered dabbing at Ms. Brackedge with your serpent’s tongue?”

“Of course I did. She even flirted with me. When we met, she saw the way I looked at her, and she played me.”

“She played you?”

“It was all very innocent, just enough action to make my little curlies stand up and applaud. She picked my brain about acting and I couldn’t shut up, because I wanted to impress her. I’m pretty sure that she has one or two deeply submerged bi-bones in her body, but I’m so holy that I thought of you, rather than pouncing for myself. The point is that the woman drips confidence. She has a steel-trap mind and her body is to die for, and she knows it. Fact is, you already don’t stand a chance. If she wants you, she’ll get you.”

“Something doesn’t add up. Why is a woman that fine unattached?”

“Didn’t you hear me? Coral knows she’s a gem. She’s quality, and she’s been patiently waiting for similar quality to come her way.”

“I think I hear a backhanded compliment coming my way.”

“Don’t let it get to your head. You’re as good as men get, but that’s nothing to crow about. Plus, you definitely have… issues.”

“Such as?”

“Don’t get me started. Your impressionability, for one. I’ve been thinking about that, now that I caught you with your hand in the nookie jar. I still feel awful for giving you the idea to abuse your training for sex. At the same time, you didn’t have to take my dirty ideas and make them your own. Think for yourself the next time.”

“I’ll try to ignore you more in the future.”

“Ha! Go too far that way and you’re toast, because I’m your walking, talking conscience. Speaking of which… Where were you last night, after dinner? I tried to call several times, to congratulate you on impressing Coral so much. You didn’t go hypnotize somebody’s giant melons, did you?”

“I had to,” I admitted. “And don’t fault me for it. I had to tie up loose ends with Rosita.”

“You tied her up?”

“Ha-ha. She needed… deprogramming. I thought you’d approve of that.”

“So you un-hypnotized her? How does that work?”

“Helping people with their addictions has become my forte. I just treated Rosita the same way, as though she was addicted to the idea of having a relationship with me.”

“An addiction you cultivated to begin with, no doubt.”

“Yes, yes, guilty. She was attracted, which is fairly common in therapy. I used my technique to fan her flames.”

“Just like you did with Lucinda, for me.”

“Right.”

“God, I can’t even imagine how Lucinda would react if I tried to move on to another lover. I won’t, of course, but now that you’ve juiced her jets for me, I think she’d go Glenn Close. I’d have to count the knives in my kitchen to make sure…”

“Grace… You aren’t helping me to feel better here.”

“Sorry. But you have nothing to worry about, because you deprogrammed Miss Melons. You really did deprogram her, right?

“Right,” I answered, and it was at least partly true.

“Was it… messy?” Grace asked.

I pictured my cum-stains shining on Rosita’s chin and breasts, and the way her thighs and pussy had looked so red and almost swollen when I finally left her apartment. “Pretty messy,” I said.

“Please tell me that she won’t be your client any more.”

“We’re already there. And the little sex thing we had going… Well, it’s gone.”

“Thank God. Can you imagine how I would have felt, if you got into legal trouble because I put the idea into your head of hypnotizing a client for sex?”

“I won’t drive over that particular cliff. You did your job. You can stop worrying.”

“Not entirely. Unless I’m misreading current events, you still have Miss Torso dangling her married legs in front of your mouth.”

“You aren’t misreading that.”

“Listen to me, Michael. The fact that Coral lives elsewhere gives you a window of opportunity to clean up your act. If you want a real relationship with a beautiful, intelligent woman. A relationship with a possible future together… You do want a real relationship of that nature, correct?”

I hesitated, before answering. “Correct.”

“I think I would have driven over and shot you if you’d said ‘no’. But you had to think it over, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” I admitted.

“I can understand how hard it will be giving up Mira. She has the best legs on the planet and you get her without the strings that accompany a legitimate relationship. A real partner requires compromise, and altered schedules, and… Well, you know — it wasn’t that long ago that you lived in the real world. What you have with Mira isn’t real, Michael, remember that. It’s sex with a beautiful woman without ever having to ask her to please use her own toothbrush, or ever hear her complain that you didn’t take out the trash. You get the pleasure of seeing Mira desiring to be with you, rather than her husband. It’s like you’re a male chimpanzee flipping the finger at another male chimpanzee, only you get to give the finger indirectly through a female chimpanzee’s pussy. That has to feel like a huge turn-on for the male ego.”

“I’m glad you think my psychological makeup is so highly evolved.”

“Oh, don’t even get me started on men and their egos. But really, just hear me when I make this one appeal: Take advantage of this ‘grace’ period, as it were, to dump — I mean, gently let go of — Miss Torso. Send Mira back to Taylor, whether she either loves him or hates him. She married him and she has to deal with that. You have the possibility of something real and special elsewhere, and Mira has no right to fuck that up.”

“That feels like sound advice.”

“So you’ll do it, right?”

“I’ll… try.”

“You’ll do more than try. You’ll do it. Repeat after me: ‘I will let go of Mira’s legs and send her back to Taylor’.”

“I will let go of Mira and send her back to Taylor.”

“She’ll probably have one hell of a bitchy-fit,“ Grace surmised, without having a clue how bad it could be.

A bitchy-fit.

I had found it impossible to completely let go of Rosita, much less Mira, and no one had hypnotically tinkered with my subconscious drives. I sat there in my living room in the dark, replaying some of the immersion suggestions I’d implanted into Mira’s psyche: You will crave Michael’s hard cock, now and always. Whatever else happens in your life, you will need to feel that unimaginable bliss, and it can only come from fucking Michael, and pleasing him with your beautiful body. You will never stop craving Michael’s cock. Life is not right… You are not right, without fucking Michael.

If I tried to push Mira into a corner of my life — or out of the picture altogether — a bitchy-fit would be the least of it. I had essentially turned her into a Michael-fucking machine, a machine that desperately needed regular deposits of my cum. It might not be an exaggeration to say that her need for my cock was only surpassed by her need for air, food and water.

I sat there in my darkened living room, gently rocking, and imagining. I tried to picture Mira’s face the instant I said the words to her: “We have to end this, Mira. I’ve found someone else and it’s time to move on. It’s been great, but…”

My stomach felt tight. Back when it was a question of “good” Mira fighting with “bad” Mira, there might have been some way to frame the news that would bypass her wild side, while lodging firmly in her sense of logic, or fairness, or even her desires to make things work out with Taylor. But that war within her was a thing of the past, at least where my cock was concerned. I tried to imagine her features finding their way towards resignation, or hope for a different, better future. I tried to imagine her teary, but accepting. All I could really see, though, were expressions of defiance, or outrage, and fury. Those were bad enough, but even they were replaced with something much worse, and even more like: a steely determination to drive a stake into the heart of any competing relationship.

She wouldn’t let it happen. I couldn’t really predict what her reaction would be, but this one thing I knew: She wouldn’t let such a thing happen. Not with the way I’d made her need me.

Would she leave Taylor? Would she lurk in the bushes and come at Coral with a knife? With horror film clarity, images of outright carnage rampaged through my mind. There had to be a way to avoid all of this. I might be able to minimize Mira’s needs, or redirect them, if I could get her into the immersion state once again. Hypnosis wasn’t a regular part of our relationship, though, as it had been with Rosita. I’d have to come up with some clever excuse to convince Mira to let me into her mind again.

If I could ever bring myself to do it. The truth was, I didn’t really want anything to change. Mira had genuine feelings for me — without them, I’d never have been able to push her psyche so far, making it impossible for her to resist coming to me again and again. I had feelings for her, too — I couldn’t really use the word “love”, not after being so underhanded in my dealings with her, but something was there, some powerful emotion piggy-backing on my addiction.

January was coming to an end, and Coral would teach into May, with her summer free. If we hit it off, as in really hit it off, I’d have a little over three months to straighten things out. Three more months of fucking Mira — or, looked at a different way, three months to figure out how to stop fucking Mira.

“Are you sitting here in the dark thinking of me?”

I jumped in the chair, not having heard her open my door. The sound of heels on the floor, moving forward at a slow, seductive pace, made my heart race.

“Yes, I was thinking of you,” I answered, chilled by an image of Mira walking through my door while Coral and I sat at the dining room table, sharing a romantic meal.

“You’re lying,” Mira sang, running a hand through my hair from behind. “If you’d been thinking of me, you’d be stroking your dick.”

The texture of nylon grazed my cheek, just before a heeled foot planted itself on the left armrest of the chair. I smelled her heat, and then it was nearly in my face, the top of a thigh pressing into my shoulder. I slipped my arm around her leg, squeezing it hard, and tracing the line of a garter up to the texture of satin at her waist. She pivoted, swinging her body around until she straddled the armrests of the chair, her rear resting on my thighs.

Mira flicked on the lamp next to us, her beauty almost exploding into my vision. Bathed in yellow-orange tones, I drank in the sight of her waist pinched in by a royal blue bustier, her breasts compressed, surging up and out, looking like the slightest motion would cause them to pop out of their confines. It was all the power of exaggeration, her already perfect figure further hourglassed for my viewing pleasure. My eyes shifted down, and found her pussy uncovered, and wide open, and glistening.

“You look absolutely incredible in that bustier,” I observed.

“You look absolutely incredible when your cock is buried deep inside of me,” she replied, her hands working at my belt buckle. “You should wait for me in the dark more often,” she breathed into my ear, sending chills all over my body. “It makes me feel like a naughty pussycat in heat, slipping and dripping around in the night.”

Her seductive tone suggested control, yet I could see how Mira’s hands and thighs trembled as she undid my pants. It had been four days since we’d fucked, and she was dying for my cock. She let out an almost anguished animal groan when my rapidly hardening meat sprang up to greet her. She didn’t even wait to get my pants all the way off before adjusting her position, essentially impaling her pussy by lifting her body and shoving her hips forward.

“Oh yesss!” she exhaled, pressing her breasts into me, warming my front while wet-steaming my dick. “Oh Michael… “ she whispered. “You don’t know… how badly I need this. Every day that we can’t be like this is torture!”

She leaned back, deliberately arching her body until her tits sprang out of the top of her garment. I reached out and played with her them, tweaking her hard nipples as she beginning a slow, wet dance all around me, her movements beginning to rock the chair.

“That’s it,” she cooed. “Play with me and rock us, Michael. Fucking rock our world.”

I could help rock the chair a little by flexing and unflexing my feet, and Mira added more momentum by leaning her upper body back, then folding into me, sending the weight of the chair backwards. My cock rocked inside of her, too, sometimes pressing on the lower wall of her pussy, sometimes more against the top.

“I’ve dreamed about this for two days,” she breathed. “Now I only have… twenty minutes… to live the dream. Oh God, oh my God… How many times… can we fuck in twenty minutes?”

The answer for me, if “fuck” meant “come”, was twice. I don’t know how many orgasms Mira had. A lot of them. Once she got going she was like an orgasm machine, begging me to keep depositing my meat into her sensitive cum-slot.

She switched the light off before climbing from my lap. My goodnight “kiss” was the pressing of a breast into the side of my face. I turned my head, found her nipple still hard, and took it between my lips.

“N…no,” she whispered. “I have to go. Although sometimes I really believe that I could fuck you forever, and still need more.”

I remained in the chair as she slipped out my front door, breathing in her lingering scent, my dick spent and sore, my thoughts skipping all over the place. I was breathing heavily and it wasn’t only from the physical exertion. I couldn’t give this up. How could I ever hope to demand that of myself, that I would give this up? It was like I kept getting free pizza delivered to me every week, only the pizza was actually glorious pussy, and the delivery boy was one of the best-looking women I’d ever known.

It was true what Grace had said: The relationship with Mira wasn’t real. But didn’t that make it more exciting in some ways? What if I ended up wanting both things, a real loving relationship on the one hand, and an unreal controlling one on the other?

I had a hard time sleeping that night, and when I did finally succumb, I had a dream about being in the middle of a civil war. I awakened in a sweat, and immediately knew how the dream could be read as a premonition, Mira vs. Coral, or an indication of the conflict within myself. I was at war with myself. Even if things didn’t go swimmingly with Coral, there would be another woman someday. I knew what I’d eventually have to do, and I also knew that I probably couldn’t make myself do it.

The web I’d spun to catch Mira those many weeks before was now sticking to me. I was caught, and I didn’t know how I’d ever free myself.