By early June I was staggering through the days, dying for a break from work. For the past eight weeks I'd been staring at a PC screen fifteen hours a day, only finding my way home at night to sleep a few hours and grab a bite to eat, and I was very grateful that our new release was nearly finished.
I'm lead programmer at a software house in Cambridge, and like every other software company I know of, we set our release deadlines as if we were all involved in some kind of weird bet. Think of the earliest date we can't prove we can't have it done by, and that'll be our due date! And of course when the deadline actually approaches in these situations, I start feeling as stressed as everybody else on my team. I even lose my sense of humor, which I'm normally proud of, because I think the code I'm working on is so important. And the time I lose going to the damned Release Oversight meetings takes time away from my important coding work. And of course the ridiculous deadline we set back in November and slipped twice is so important and so important . . ..
With all these important commitments, I end up with a pretty grim attitude. I actually know better: the world isn't going to come to an end if we're a month late on the release. But that's the idea with deadlines: you come up with one when the job looks easy because you can't picture all the details yet, and then you find after awhile that you're killing yourself to meet it. And if you didn't do that, you know the release wouldn't just slip a month -- everything would take twice as long because nobody would feel any sense of urgency. The joke is that putting out a release is like having sex with a gorilla: You're not finished until the gorilla is finished! When we finally get our software working, we tell each other that the gorilla is smoking a cigarette.
I made the final change in the project at three AM on Saturday. I'd sent the rest of my team home around midnight when they got so tired they were making dumb mistakes. But then Jeff Cole, a bright young guy on my team who had the weirdest schedule I've ever seen, showed up for work at two after sleeping for eight hours. So we pulled the new system and ran it through the unit tests without a hitch. Then we handed it over to the Quality Assurance team that was working through the weekend. I was pretty sure the gorilla was toking up, and Jeff was fresh enough to baby-sit QA until other members of the team showed up in the morning, so I went home to sleep for fourteen hours.
I usually feel as if I'm convalescing from the flu after a big push at work. Sunday I called in to see if there were any problems, but the QA guys said things looked good so far. So I took a long hike around Cambridge, had a late brunch, then went home and slept some more. Monday I went into the office early and there was a flap because of some global variables getting corrupted, a problem that could have been caused by some of our changes, so I dug in and looked for the bug. I found it in about an hour -- an out of bounds reference from some changes made by the kernel porting group -- and then QA took over and said the problem was fixed. I went out to a movie while QA reran their regression tests, then checked things were still on track with the release before I ambled home. On Tuesday, I went in and cleaned up some of the junk in my office that had collected over the past few months. The other guys in my team were also coming in for short days now that the pressure was off, but we happened to all be in at the same time and went to lunch together. The weather outside was gorgeous after weeks of rain, and I was feeling in such a buoyant mood that I took two long walks, one just after lunch and another after I left work at five.
When I got home from my evening walk, I wolfed down a frozen dinner. I still felt hungry when I'd finished, but I wanted to lose a few pounds I'd gained while I was working on the release, by keeping my calories down. I threw the dinner container into the wastebasket, went into the living room to put on a new "Best of Charley Parker" CD with the volume low, and settled down in the recliner to read a few of the humor books I'd just bought. I was finishing a new Dave Barry book when I heard someone coming down the stairs from the bedrooms on the second floor. A few seconds later my housemate, Kim Gleason, came into the living room dressed in a terry cloth bathrobe. I nodded in greeting and she nodded back, then I pretended to go back to my reading.
I'm always extremely aware of being in the same room with Kim, and tonight my attention was drawn by something strange about her appearance and the way she carried herself as she entered. During the short time she remained downstairs I tried to figure out what it was that seemed unusual, watching her carefully while I pretended to read. For one thing, her face was flushed -- a rosy glow radiating from her cheeks -- and the flush continued down her neck and as much as I could see of her upper chest. It occurred to me she might have a sunburn, or perhaps had just finished a hot shower, but it didn't look quite like a sunburn, and I hadn't heard any water running. Another thing: why was Kim coming down to the main floor wearing a bathrobe? The terry cloth robe wasn't what you'd call revealing, but it didn't quite cover her knees and I noticed that her face seemed more red than the flesh on her legs. My eyes wanted to follow the curves of Kim's legs up much higher than her robe permitted, but then I felt that way even when she wore shorts. The flush on Kim's upper body seemed to suggest something to me at some level, but I couldn't for the moment figure out what it was. Kim is an extremely light blond, with blue eyes and very fair skin, even when she's out in the sun a lot playing tennis, so the rosy color was a strong contrast to her usual light complexion. And Kim's flushed face made her look even more attractive than usual, adding a touch of vulnerability to her habitual expression of slightly surprised innocence.
Kim's bathrobe also made me aware of the outline of the rest of her body, not an unusual state of affairs when she was around, or even when she wasn't. Kim has a very nice figure. She's athletic looking and a bit tall, about five-nine compared to my own six-two, with lovely long legs that seem to go right up to her neck. She has a slim waist, breasts that are normal in size but very ripely rounded, and hips that form a modest hourglass with her waist and upper body. But turned to the side slightly, as Kim was now, my eyes fixed on her most outstanding feature: the swelling curve of her behind, made more prominent by her natural posture.
Kim stands very erect, but she has a backward tilt to her hips that makes her back arch to bring her shoulders to an upright position, like a model in a "Frederick's of Hollywood" catalog. The arch in her back leaves an unconscious impression that Kim is thrusting her ass out purposely, and of course this makes it seem even more erotic. I know that our other male housemate, Dave Freeman, has just as much trouble as I do keeping his eyes on politically correct parts of Kim, and I'd been on walks with her when I saw several different men turn surreptitiously after passing to stare at her rear. As far as I could see, Kim seemed unaware of the effect she had.
Kim's behind seemed to resist containment by normal clothes, and as I watched her in her bathrobe, the almost subliminal cleavage between her buttocks fascinated me. I had a slightly scary impulse to reach out and pull the fabric aside to get a better look. In my current state of concentration, watching Kim to figure out what was unusual in her appearance, I suddenly became certain from subliminal cues -- the drape and sliding friction of the cloth on her body -- that she was wearing nothing under her robe. Not a terribly surprising condition for someone about to take a shower or whatever it was, but still rather strange. Why was she downstairs in the living room parading in front of her male roommate in just a bathrobe and no underwear? Kim was usually very thoughtful about any action of hers that might make someone else uncomfortable.
The oddest thing about Kim's demeanor entering the room, something I'd noticed immediately but needed a few seconds to articulate, was a body language that seemed to say, "I've got a secret!" I'd noticed several times before that Kim wasn't very good at misdirection. Even in a white lie, excusing herself from a dinner party by saying she was too busy, she was totally transparent. So now as she crossed the room it was as if a master comedian, Woody Allen or someone of that quality, was imitating a nine-year-old trying to give a misleading impression. "Nothing important here," her movements suggested, and she actually broke stride and gave a kind of skip to suggest studied insouciance. "This is a totally uninteresting object," her averted eyes and casual movements suggested as she took something out of the pocket of her robe and placed it on the stand in front of the sound system: a cassette tape. At this point Kim turned her flushed face and looked directly at me with an unreadable expression that nevertheless clearly reflected some strong emotion. I glanced up from my book, since I couldn't watch her surreptitiously while she was looking directly at me, and we made eye contact for just an instant. She looked a bit frightened by this, as if she could be arrested for being caught staring, said, "Sorry, Bob," then abruptly left the room. I could hear her climb the stairs again and walk quickly down the hall to what I thought must be her bedroom. Then I heard a door shut.
After a few moments of silence from above, I got up and went over to the sound system to look at the cassette. Just a standard TDK tape with no label. I considered for a moment whether it was any kind of invasion of Kim's privacy to play the tape. But no, Kim had come down and placed an unlabeled tape next to the sound system in the living room; it was natural to give it a try, assuming she'd left a music tape for common enjoyment. Just as I reached this conclusion my Charley Parker CD ended, making the decision an easy one.
Even with this innocent interpretation, I wasn't anxious to let Kim know I was playing her tape. I put the cassette in the player, turned the volume down a good deal, then pressed play. There was a short silence, followed by Kim's quiet voice enunciating what appeared to be a nonsensical sequence of words, separated by rather long pauses.
"Antwerp . . . Battery . . . Rouge . . . Pulpy."
Then a longer pause and I heard Kim's voice again.
"You're under now, Kim. I want you to go deeper and deeper until you find it easy to concentrate fully on what I'm saying." (Long pause.) "Now when you awaken you won't remember the trigger phrase you heard at the beginning of the tape, but you'll be able to remember every detail of the vocabulary definitions I'm about to read. Pay attention now, you'll remember everything from the time you hear the word, 'start,' until you hear the word, 'stop'. Ready . . . start."
Then Kim's voice on the tape began giving a list of definitions for terms she obviously needed to know in her law courses. I didn't really pay much attention because I was too shaken by my realization of what was on the tape. It was a session where Kim was using hypnotic suggestion to help her memorize things, a study method she'd told me about a few weeks before. Obviously the nonsense word sequence at the beginning was a trigger phrase to make her enter hypnotic trance: after she heard that phrase she was hypnotized and open to direction. But what I was having trouble taking in was why Kim had come into the room just now and left this particular tape. Did she want me find it and play it? To learn her trigger phrase?
Did she want me to hypnotize her?
I jumped up from my crouch in front of the tape deck and started pacing, too jittery to remain still. What was her motive in leaving the tape? I had a strong feeling that it was sexual! That she was fantasizing about some kind of kinky scenario I could initiate after I hypnotized her! That's why her face was so red when she came down to leave the tape: she was actually blushing! I found I was breathing hard and beginning to get an erection.
I shook my head and tried to calm down and run a sanity check. After a moment I started to think of things that seemed to contradict my impressions. Why would Kim take such a strange route to sex? She was so attractive she could date almost any guy she wanted! It must have been obvious that I liked her -- that I was attracted to her. She didn't have to trick me into anything! I began to run through my impressions again to see where I might be wrong. I felt a fleeting guilt about being too cerebral, a programmer nerd looking for a bug even where Kim was involved, but it's my nature to think carefully through anything important.
OK, she came into the room and purposely left the tape . . . Yes, she certainly didn't leave it by accident. Was it so I would find it? Well . . . it had something to do with me! My being there was important -- she was acting nonchalant for my benefit. And the way she'd looked at me just before she left! Did she expect me to play the tape and hear her trigger phrase? If I did, I couldn't think of any other course I could take that would make a difference except to use it on her so she ended up hypnotized. And that meant sex?
It had to be something like that given what was on the tape and the way she'd looked -- she'd definitely been blushing! Also, now that I thought about it, there was something a bit strange about the way she acted when she told me about how she used hypnotic suggestion to study. I was pretty sure she was leading up to something like this even then.
But there still seemed to be something missing. Why so much indirection? If she thought it would be sexy to have me hypnotize her, why not just bring it up in conversation? She could ask my help in studying or something. That seemed like a pretty transparent ploy, but I remembered fondly a couple of girls who'd made equally obvious, purportedly innocent, proposals. And if Kim was going to let me hypnotize her, I didn't think she'd be able to keep any secrets from me for very long anyway. So why all the cloak-and-dagger?
Then I had another thought. Maybe Kim didn't really expect something to happen exactly the way I was picturing it. Maybe she didn't really expect me to get up immediately and play the tape, just wanted the potential to exist. To make a good sex fantasy! Yes, that felt . . . reasonable. I considered the idea for a few moments, getting kind of excited again.
Of course I knew it could be something else entirely that was going on, I was wrong at least half the time when I tried to do a Sherlock Holmes bit like this, but I couldn't think of anything else that fit. And if I was right, then Kim actually was doing something pretty kinky taking a chance of putting herself under my control this way. I'd learned a lot about her from casual conversation with Ellen Simmich, our other housemate, and I knew Kim wasn't a nun. But her face always looked so innocent that the idea she might be surreptitiously playing fantasy sex games like this was kind of a shock. Not that I was resistant to games with Kim -- the very possibility was making me so excited I was having difficulty breathing! I was now completely erect, hard as a rock, and nearly panting in short, rapid gasps.
When I noticed I was actually beginning to tremble, I went into the kitchen and got out my bottle of scotch, poured about four ounces in a glass, and drank it down. It burned my throat and made me cough, so I drank a glass of water and after I got the tears out of my eyes I went back to the tape deck, feeling a bit steadier. The list of definitions was just ending and I heard Kim's voice saying that the listener (she addressed herself by name again, which sounded odd) would wake up on the count of three and feel rested, not remembering anything except what was on the list of definitions. After a slow count of three, the voice stopped. I let it play a bit longer but there didn't seem to be anything more on the tape, and suddenly I heard the sound of movement from the hall above. I pressed rewind immediately, then heard another door close near the top of the stairs, the door to the hall bathroom, and right afterward the water for the shower started running. Kim and I were alone in the house right now, and while I knew she took quick showers, she'd certainly be occupied for a few minutes longer. After the tape was rewound, I listened again to the introductory trigger phrase.
"Antwerp . . . Battery . . . Rouge . . . Pulpy."
Yes, I remembered that the word "Antwerp" was used in a Science Fiction story by Ursula LeGuin to put the main character in a hypnotic trance. So Kim must have read the same story -- I knew she liked SF. I didn't know where the other words came from, but after a minute it struck me that the word Antwerp alone might be too likely to occur in normal conversation, so Kim used a sequence of four unusual words to avoid going under accidentally. That made sense, and it also suggested that Kim worried about being put under by someone accidentally speaking the trigger phrase. If any of this made sense.
I rewound the tape again, took it out of the deck and placed it back on the counter where Kim had left it, trying to position it the same way I'd found it. I finished just as I heard the water cut off in the shower above and then the sounds of Kim returning to her room. I suddenly felt a strong urge to yawn and stretch, which I did; then I walked slowly around the living room bouncing a little on the balls of my feet and trying to think what to do next. There was one course I could take to get all my questions answered about what was happening, but I didn't know if I was going to be able to do it. I wasn't sure I'd have the guts to try the trigger phrase when I saw Kim. I went back into the kitchen, got another glass of water and sat down at the table. Suddenly I heard a door open upstairs and Kim came down the steps two at a time, with her usual springy step. She appeared at the bottom, wearing a light summer skirt and sleeveless top, walked quickly into the living room directly to the tape, and put it in her skirt pocket. Then she glanced around, saw me in the kitchen, and smiled.
"Sorry I was such a zombie before, Bob," Kim said. "I was still feeling kind of dopey from a nap. Would you like a cup of tea, or is it too late for you?"
"Sure," I said, "I'll have a cup with you."
Even Kim's voice sounds sexy to me. She speaks in a high register but always sounds kind of throaty, like she's a little bit hoarse. And I'd noticed when she talked with me she had little mannerisms that made her seem particularly cute, like Annie Hall in the movie. I didn't think she was flirting, exactly, but she was "on stage" when she interacted with me. She wasn't like this when she talked with Ellen or Dave, our other housemates, although she sometimes showed a lot of animation of a different kind when talking with Ellen. She came into the kitchen and turned on the stove, ran water into a teakettle and made all the tea preparations. I enjoyed watching her, so jaunty now, all hints of her earlier strange behavior erased, pretty and physically self-assured, and when she bent over to get the teapot out of the dishwasher the wonderful rear view gave me a twinge of the erection I'd had a few minutes ago.
The problem as I saw it was that if I tried the trigger phrase and it didn't work but she recognized what I was doing, she might be furious with me. After all, I'd be trying to do something against her will, actually trying to subvert her will entirely. On the other hand, she'd purposely left the tape where I might find it, I couldn't be wrong about that, although I didn't know exactly why she'd done it. And if I didn't find the courage to try this I was going to think of myself as a no-guts, craven dweeb for the rest of my life. A little cowardly voice in my head told me that I could put off the decision until I had more chance to think, but that was clearly a bad idea. Right now it might be reasonable to use the phrase and see what happened. If it failed to work, I could claim that I didn't understand the purpose of the tape, so I hadn't known what the phrase was for. But by tomorrow that opportunity would be gone -- it would be unnatural to wait and then quote the phrase later. Still I could feel my stomach tightening at the thought of actually doing this, and I was grateful for the numbing effect of the scotch.
Kim finished setting up the tea, and came to sit at the table while the water came to a boil. She looked at me and seemed about to say something but I beat her to it.
"Kim," I said, "Listen to this. Antwerp . . . Battery . . . Rouge . . . Pulpy."
For a moment I panicked when I thought I was going to forget the last word of the phrase, but I remembered it in time, and as I finished I saw Kim's eyes close and her body take on a very relaxed posture. Was it working? I waited a moment and then spoke again in a shaky voice.
"Kim," I said, "can you hear me?"
" . . . Yes . . ." Kim's voice seemed very relaxed and distant.
"Are you asleep?"
"I'm . . . hypnotized . . ."
"Well, that's fine," I said, "I want you to ah . . . go deeper and deeper until you can concentrate completely on what I'm saying."
That was close to the wording Kim had used on her tape so it must be all right. Now I needed a few seconds to take in the fact that the phrase had worked and to calm down again. I leaned back in my chair and took a few deep trembling breaths, then kneaded the back of my neck and my upper arms while I consciously relaxed all my muscles. It suddenly struck me I had no way of knowing if Kim was really hypnotized or just faking, pretending to be hypnotized so she could play out some kind of fantasy. For the moment I couldn't think of any way of checking, and then I realized I probably didn't want to expose her if she was faking. It would be a good idea to play along if this was just an act she used to drop her inhibitions. I got up and took the teakettle off the burner so it wouldn't whistle and interrupt us. That made me wonder how long we had before our other housemates returned from the concert they were at. Looking at the clock I decided I'd have at least an hour and a quarter with Kim with no interruption. I went back to the table and asked the question uppermost in my mind.
"Kim, when you came downstairs earlier, you left a cassette tape on the counter. Did you do that purposely so I'd find it?"
Kim's face started to flush again, and she seemed to have difficulty answering. I began to worry she was going to wake up from her trance because of the struggle I could see on her face. Finally she said, " . . . Y-y-yes. In a way . . . I thought that you might find it . . . but I really didn't believe you would."
"Why did you find it so hard to answer that question?"
Kim's reply was quick this time. "It was an embarrassing question! I don't want to talk about that tape with you!"
I thought about that for a moment before speaking again. "Kim, who are you talking to? Whose voice are you hearing?"
" . . . Why, I'm talking to you, Bob . . ."
Of course. The problem was that, even hypnotized, Kim knew she was talking to me, and found some things too embarrassing to discuss. Hypnotic suggestion might not overcome her reluctance, and if I kept trying to ask embarrassing questions she might pop right out of her trance. But I remembered something now from the time when I was a horny fourteen year old and read through several books on hypnotism, planning to offer my services as a parlor hypnotist (whatever that might be, but it sounded extremely cool!) to several attractive girls in the neighborhood. Most of the books mentioned that hypnotic subjects couldn't be made to do anything they would resist strongly in normal circumstances. But one of the authors cited a number of cases (legal cases!) where such scruples had obviously been overcome, and warned of an effect that might be dangerous to the subject if the hypnotist wasn't aware of it. Or maybe the author was just trying to sell his book to beady-eyed adolescent males. Anyway, it was worth a try. Success would probably depend on how suggestible Kim was in her trance state, and she claimed she was the best subject in the hypnotic susceptibility experiment she'd signed up for as an undergraduate. I thought for a moment and then spoke again.
"Kim, listen carefully. In a little while, Bob's voice is going to go away. Bob himself will no longer be here, but you'll continue to hear a voice and obey its commands. The voice you hear will be appear to be coming from a different part of your own mind; it'll sound like your own voice communicating with you through a cassette tape. Now there'll be no reason to be embarrassed answering any questions or obeying any commands you hear from this voice. Even if they seem like odd questions or commands, you won't be concerned. You'll be all alone here and just doing what you yourself want when you listen to this voice. Do you understand?"
" . . . Y-yes . . ."
"Good. Now I'm . . . uh . . . you're going to hear a count of three and as this count progresses Bob will disappear and the voice you'll hear will then sound exactly like your own voice. When you hear 'three,' Bob will have gone away, he'll be fine but he'll be somewhere else where he won't be aware of anything that's going on, and you'll be all alone here listening to your own voice. Ready?"
"Yes."
Kim's hesitation seemed to be gone, but I thought I might have to have to be careful not to refer to myself as "I" from now on, to keep from contradicting the suggestion I'd just given.
"One . . ." I said. "Two . . . Three. Good, now you're all alone and this voice you're hearing is just your own voice. You don't have any reason to be embarrassed or hesitant about questions or commands from this voice, do you?"
"No," Kim answered immediately in a very relaxed tone. She sounded different than before.
"First of all," I said, "You won't remember any of this when you wake up. You won't remember Bob using the trigger phrase or anything that happened later, until you wake up from hypnosis. All you'll remember is an enjoyable discussion you had with Bob that will explain the later time. Do you understand this?"
"Yes."
I took another deep breath. Here was the moment of truth. "Now explain why you left the tape in the living room."
"It was for my sex fantasy," Kim answered calmly. "The one I usually have when I masturbate. I imagine Bob playing the tape and finding out how to hypnotize me, then making me his sex-slave."
I felt a wave of excitement again as she finished speaking. I was kind of shocked about how direct Kim was now about what she'd been doing. It was one thing to imagine that she might have had a sexual motive like that in leaving the tape and another entirely to know it was true, to know she'd chosen me for her sex fantasy. I've heard a lot of complaints from women about men treating them as sex objects, and I guess there are aspects to that I'll never understand, but right now I couldn't imagine a more exciting idea than being Kim's sex object in her fantasy. I suddenly had X-rated pictures running through my thoughts: Kim thinking about me as she lay naked in her bed, getting aroused and stroking herself, lubricating and straining to reach climax, thinking of me!
"When did you masturbate?" I asked in a choked voice. It was obvious, but I wanted to hear it.
"Right after I left the tape downstairs," Kim said in her calm tone. "I went right upstairs and did it, then I showered and came down to get the tape back."
God! She was stroking off fantasizing about me playing the tape while I was down here playing the tape. My cock was so erect and hard that it was beginning to hurt, and I took another short break to try to get myself under control and think of a few less arousing questions.
"Have you ever done anything like this before," I asked a minute later, "left a tape where someone could find it?"
"Yes, I left tapes several times where my last two boyfriends could find them. But I'm sure they never noticed." Ellen had mentioned she thought Kim's last boyfriend was a twerp. Here was proof.
"Did you think Bob might notice it when you left the tape?"
"Bob's different than most of the boys I've known!" Kim said in an animated voice. "He's very smart and seems to notice everything that goes on around him. I was sure he realized I was acting strangely when I left the tape. I was really scared going upstairs and it made me so horny I had to use my pillow to muffle myself when I got close."
Kim had her usual innocent look, and I was painfully hard again. It seemed that the best way to keep myself under control was to concentrate on the questions I wanted to ask.
"What's your opinion of Bob? Describe him." I found that I cared a great deal about Kim's answer to this, and I braced myself not to feel too bad if she said some negative things.
"Well . . ." Kim paused a moment, then continued, "He's really good looking. Dark brown hair, tall and strong, a little pudgy. He has a sensual mouth -- he looks a little like a picture I saw once of Lord Byron. And he's smart, and funny, and good company. I like his name, Robert Kincaid. And of course I'm sexually attracted."
God, what a wonderful opinion Kim had of me! Except for the part about being pudgy, ungrateful shit that I am in the middle of all that build-up, I felt a little hurt about that. But it obviously didn't turn her off to think I was a little pudgy, and to tell the truth I was surprised by her enthusiasm. I knew I wasn't bad looking but I thought Kim was really beautiful. I'd had a crush on her for months and changed apartments just to share hers. I knew she was between boyfriends, and thought I might stand a chance. But now as Kim's outline of what she thought of me and the situation we were in began to penetrate, I realized it wasn't just a matter of chance anymore!
"But don't you think Bob likes you?" I asked. "Have you . . . uh, been thinking at all about trying to start a relationship with him?"
"Yes," Kim said. "I think Bob likes me, and I've been trying to find time to hang out with him. I thought I'd start making a stronger play when Ellen and Dave go on their trip this Saturday. There'll be a lot more opportunity then."
Yes, of course! Ellen and Dave were going to drive around the country, starting four days from now. They'd be gone a month, and it made a lot of sense to wait. Except that now that I knew what Kim had been fantasizing about, I was impatient.
I wet my lips as I returned to something that I'd wanted to ask earlier. "You said you were scared that Bob noticed something when you left the tape, and that made you horny. Could you explain exactly what it was that excited you?"
"It was the . . . danger!" A slight flush crept into Kim's face again as she continued. "I'm normally shy, but I get really horny sometimes, and I have fantasies about submitting to a man -- Bob, since I met him and learned he was coming to live here -- who punishes and humiliates me. He paddles my bottom until I'm scared to disobey him, then uses me for his own climax while he makes me wait for mine . . ." Kim was looking very flushed again, clearly in the grip of a strong erotic impulse. "I'm his sex-slave, and he can do anything he wants with me. He tantalizes me and withholds my climax for hours or even days, then punishes me if I try to touch myself, until I beg him, promise to do anything he says if he'll just let me come." Kim came to a kind of pause, breathing heavily, then relaxed a bit and continued in a somewhat more normal tone. "So when I left the tape downstairs, I was turned on by the idea that Bob might find all this out, and hypnotize me. And then make me helpless so I'd be his slave for real!"
Kim's voice was resonant and erotically charged while she was explaining her fantasy. I continued to be stunned with each new revelation -- Kim, with her innocent face and explicit submissive scenarios. And it was a tremendous turn-on for me! I actually had a lot of experience acting as a dominant because of a submissive girlfriend named Julie I'd had in San Francisco. I lived with Julie for more than a year after college, just before I moved to Boston to take my current job. And while I didn't think I was hung up about submissive relationships -- I would have bet serious money that Kim was completely straight -- I was extremely excited to learn that Kim had these kinds of fantasies too. I never had a more intense sexual relationship than I did with Julie, and from what I knew of some of Julie's like-minded friends, submissive women put more energy into sex than anyone else on the planet.
I tried to consider what I wanted to find out next, and another question occurred to me. "Have you ever told any of your fantasies to a boyfriend, or had any of them come true in any of your relationships?" I asked.
"Not really," Kim answered. "I was too worried to tell anyone. I was afraid any boy I told would think I was disgusting. The only time I ever had anything happen, I got a few light spankings from my boyfriend Malcolm when I was a senior in college. I tried to make it obvious how much it turned me on, but I he seemed to think it was kind of sick. Later he said I had too strong a sex drive and that no normal man could satisfy me . . . and then we broke up. It worried me a lot and made me want to hide my fantasies from other boyfriends."
Jesus! So she was almost completely inexperienced at this. And what a prick Malcolm must have been! I had a lot of trouble imagining any guy thinking it was sick that Kim got turned on from being spanked, or being unhappy that she had a strong sex drive. Malcolm must have been an insecure loser, trying to make Kim feel bad when they were breaking up. I felt so angry about that, it took me a few minutes to get back on track with my questions.
"So when you think of Bob punishing you . . . Do you think he's being mean?"
"No, he's really nice. But he gets mad when I act bratty -- I act that way purposely sometimes so I'll deserve to get punished -- and then he paddles me until my bottom is so sore I can't sit down. Sometimes he might act a little mean by making me horny and leaving me frustrated for a few days, but he just does it because it makes me so frantic and hot!"
Um. When Kim talked about her fantasies she didn't sound like she was hypnotized at all, and she added lascivious detail without being asked. But how real was all this? What ideas in her fantasies would she actually want to have happen? I knew from experience with Julie that fantasy and reality are quite different things when it came down to real pain. I thought for a moment about how to ask this, taking my time until I was able to come up with a good question.
"Kim," I said, "for the next few minutes I want you to picture that Bob is going to do some of the things in real life that you imagine happening in your fantasies. This shouldn't feel at all threatening to you. Any bad things that you might worry about Bob doing can be avoided -- all you have to do is say what those things would be, and then only the good sexy things will happen. And there's no hurry. You'll have plenty of opportunities to think of things you don't want Bob to do. Now picture this situation as realistically as you can. Bob has just told you that he's learned how to hypnotize you, and he's going to act out some of your fantasies."
Kim's face began to flush again, until she was at least as red as I'd seen her when she was leaving the tape.
"Now thinking about this situation, talk about anything that worries you. Explain what things in your fantasies you wouldn't want to happen in real life."
Kim's voice sounded low and embarrassed, and a little unhappy. "I'd worry that Bob would think some of my fantasies were awful. That he'd think I was oversexed -- a disgusting person."
"You don't have to worry about that," I answered quickly. "Bob won't think your fantasies are disgusting."
Kim looked even more unhappy now. "But even I think that some of my fantasies are disgusting, so why wouldn't Bob feel the same way?"
"What sort of fantasies do you have that make you think that?" Kim had me a bit worried now. There actually were a few things I wouldn't want to deal with.
"Like getting paddled for acting bratty until I'm too sore to sit down," Kim said in a low tone, and then even lower with a new flush, "or needing to ask permission to use the bathroom."
"You don't have any fantasies that involve real harm, do you? Like piercing or anything involving blood?"
"No, I don't! Nothing like that!"
I felt a bit of relief, although I hadn't really thought that was likely. "You don't need to worry, then. You can be confident that Bob will enjoy any kind of . . . sex-play that will humiliate you without really harming you. None of your body functions are going to disgust him. He'll really enjoy controlling you, paddling you, making you squirm, as long as it ultimately excites you too."
Kim seemed to relax a little after hearing this, but her face stayed red. She didn't say anything more.
"Are there any other things that worry you or frighten you about having Bob do the things in your fantasies?" I prompted gently.
"Well, I'll be very embarrassed of course to have Bob punishing me for being disobedient." Kim paused in thought a moment before continuing. "And being paddled will hurt, but I've always been very excited by the idea of being punished that way. I got paddled as a kid when I acted up, so I have some experience with it, and I want Bob to do it. I might worry with some boys that they'd be too rough, make it harder than I could stand, but I don't think Bob would do that." Then she hesitated as she had another thought.
"But sometimes I think about Bob humiliating me by punishing me in front of other people, like I'm in public and they can watch me getting paddled. I usually have fantasies like that when I'm having trouble reaching orgasm because I've been masturbating too much, but I don't think I'd want to have it really happen. Not with any of my friends, anyway, or anything too . . . blatant. Maybe just embarrassing things Bob might make me do outdoors, but nothing . . . uh, we could get arrested for."
Well, that seemed reasonable. And it was a surprisingly close match between fantasy and reality. I was breathing heavily again and the aching feeling in my cock was back, but this was all in a good cause. I might have missed some details just now of things that would be too much for Kim to take in real life, but it was a reasonable start. I was going to need to know these things.
I began to turn an idea over in my mind that would require a lot of self-control on my part. That I should wait to get physical with Kim until Saturday, after our housemates left on their trip. That would actually be our first good opportunity to spend a lot of time together. I could take breaks from work whenever I felt like it now that the release was out, and Kim was taking a few summer classes at Harvard but she didn't have to work as hard as she had during the regular school year. Still, sometimes Ellen or Dave came home unexpectedly from their jobs to pick something up, and I certainly didn't want to be interrupted after I told Kim I'd hypnotized her and started putting her submission fantasies into practice. I could also use the time between now and Saturday getting Kim to tell me more about the kind of domination she imagined and thinking about how to use hypnosis to get the best sex-slave effects. I had some ideas about that, and I'd need time to work things out.
For a minute I thought wistfully about having sex with Kim before Saturday without telling her -- just use hypnosis to convince her she was masturbating or something while we were doing it. But I considered that for a moment and knew I wouldn't do it. Even if Kim fantasized about me using her sexually without her knowledge, it simply didn't feel right to me. So I decided I'd just have to depend on using my hand until Saturday. Anyway, now that I thought of it, Kim might not be horny herself for a while, considering what she'd just been doing upstairs in her bedroom.
"Kim, how often do you masturbate?"
"Usually only about twice a day," she answered quickly. "But occasionally I do it twice in an hour. I have multiple orgasms and sometimes it's like I can't have them all in one session."
Wow! I once thought guys were the only ones who did it that often, but a few of Julie's submissive women friends probably matched this performance. I looked at Kim's innocent face again and felt a wave of desire. No, I had to stick to questions and answers for now. I had a good one, though.
"When you fantasize about being paddled, do you picture yourself with your ass exposed, getting spanked until it turns red, and are you embarrassed about having Bob see you like that?"
"Yes," Kim answered in a throaty voice. "I think of myself bent over something or restrained in . . . like, a punishment machine, getting smacked on the bottom with a paddle, and Bob teasing me and rubbing my bottom with his hand between paddling rounds."
I flushed, embarrassed for some reason to hear Kim explain this part of her fantasy, such a sexy picture, with her loveliest feature so prominent. And it made me think of another thing I'd wondered about.
"How do you think your butt looks to other people, Kim? I mean when you're normally dressed?"
"Oh!" Kim gave a sort of wail. "I know I'm fat back there! A couple of girls I knew in high school, good friends, told me it looked kind of . . . cheap. I've tried all sorts of exercises and nothing works. A few of my old boyfriends said it made me look sexy, but I always worry that other boys I like will be turned off."
Good friends, right. Bitchy broads who were jealous of Kim's looks, more likely. But I wasn't too surprised to hear Kim tell me this. Women are so tough on themselves and each other about weight, as anyone can see looking at all the underfed fashion models in the women's magazines. The leading cause of death among fashion models is falling through street grates.
"Kim," I said, "from now on, you are to feel complete confidence that Bob finds you extremely attractive in general, and thinks your big buns are a particularly appealing feature."
Kim looked bemused for just a moment, and then her sweet-looking face took on a gratified expression with a slight undercurrent of lust. A very sexy sight as I realized she was thinking about me again. OK, maybe just one command now to actually make Kim do something, to make sure I could have her act out an embarrassing scene, as well as making her answer embarrassing questions. I realized I'd had this in the back of my mind for some time, and I was looking forward to it with excitement.
"Kim," I said, "you're still all alone in the house, and you're going to start to feel something that might be a bruise, not too painful, on your inner thigh near your crotch. Now stand up and lift your skirt, then lower your, uh, drawers, and examine yourself there to see if you can find a bruise."
Kim stood up and opened her eyes, which startled me for a moment, but she didn't glance at me. Without any formality she lifted her skirt and dropped her underpants to the floor, stepping out of them, then sat back down and raised her right knee in the air, resting her heel on the seat of her chair. Then she lifted her skirt out of the way and began to prod herself carefully with her left forefinger on the inner part of her raised thigh, just above her fully exposed vagina. Because of her light blond hair, Kim's vagina looked almost child-like. My erection stopped being a background consideration and began to tingle with demanding sensitivity. What control I had! It was intoxicating!
I couldn't resist another command. "All right, Kim," I said in a choked voice, "Now you're going to enter your sex fantasy for awhile. You'll want to get into the kind of position you fantasize about, and start stroking off."
Kim paused for a moment and started looking a bit dreamy, then she picked up her underpants, stood up and began walking toward the stairs, obviously intending to go up to her room, so I spoke again. "Stay down in the common area, Kim. Nobody's going to come in and interrupt you. And it will occur to you that it's more erotic to do it downstairs like this."
Kim stopped walking and looked around for a moment with a slight flush starting on her face, then walked into the living room. I followed and flipped on the living room lights, after telling her she wouldn't notice it happening. Kim quickly pulled off her top and removed her bra and I was struck by the sudden sight of her breasts, very firm and rounded, extremely pale skin with contrasting pink aureoles around her nipples. She crouched in front of the large ottoman that came with the reclining chair I'd brought with me from my old apartment. Then she leaned over on top of the ottoman with her knees coming down behind, and her shoulders slouching down on the front end, so her bottom was the highest point. Almost as an afterthought, she lifted the back of her skirt up to her neck to expose her ass. Seeing her in this position, I felt a wave of excitement that almost made me dizzy. I noticed Kim was tightening the muscles of her buttocks by straining her knees forward on the under side of the ottoman, spreading her legs slightly so that her vagina was visible. The impression I had was that she was making her bottom as prominent and vulnerable as possible and that in her fantasy she was about to be paddled.
This was the first time I'd seen Kim's lovely ass uncovered, and I couldn't take my eyes off it. Like her breasts, the skin was extremely pale, darkening slightly below the panty line to a light blond tan on her legs. I moved to look more closely and saw the pink bud of her rectum. Then I noticed that Kim was stretching her right arm under her body on the ottoman to rub her middle finger rhythmically in a circular motion around her clitoris, just below the beautiful double moons of her buttocks. Her vagina already looked a bit moist from lubrication and I saw she was rocking her hips slowly up and down to thrust her sex against her finger in a slow rhythm. I stared, fascinated, as Kim got into the swing of it and her rhythm began to speed up.
"Don't bring yourself to climax, Kim!" I ordered in a croaking voice. "You can get very close and tantalize yourself, but you'll stop making contact if you feel like you're about to come." I felt like I was close to climax myself, but I was still rational enough to plan that Kim should refrain from orgasm until Saturday, so she'd be as horny as possible when our housemates left.
I noticed a low crooning noise Kim was making and walked around to her front. Her back was arched so her head was nearly parallel with the floor, not supported by anything, but looking somehow relaxed and natural. The lower parts of her breasts just touched the ottoman, and I noticed she was playing with one of her breasts with her left hand, pinching and twisting the nipple in a rather rough fashion. While I watched, she switched to teasing the other nipple. Her head was turned to her left side, well lit by the lamp, and her face looked heavy-lidded, her lips swollen and loose. She had a little crease in the center of her forehead, like she was concentrating on a difficult crossword puzzle. As I leaned close to her face, the crooning noise resolved into words.
"Oh please . . . Oh please . . . Ohhh . . . Please . . . I'll do anything . . . Please . . ." I noticed that Kim's slightly frowning face was also wincing intermittently, in time with the rocking of her hips on the ottoman. I felt another wave of desire for Kim's nearly nude body, but I'd decided to wait for Saturday and I didn't seriously consider doing anything to her now. Nevertheless, I realized I didn't want to try to hold myself in any more, so I dropped to my knees, then forward onto the floor keeping Kim's face in view. I rubbed my rock-hard cock a few times with my right hand through my pants, and after about four strokes I felt an extremely intense climax. I cried out and felt myself ejaculating for what seemed a longer time than usual, until I felt completely drained. When I looked up again, Kim's face was still frowning in a completely self-involved way, and her wincing in time with the rocking was even more pronounced -- the rocking itself seemed to have increased in amplitude. I slowly stood up and walked around behind again, watching Kim's finger frantically stroking her clitoris for a few seconds in time with her rocking, then switch to pushing itself in and out of the vaginal entry which was now extremely wet, then back to massaging the clitoris. Kim was making little keening shrieks now that sounded like the words she'd been crooning a minute ago. My cock tried to come erect again and almost managed it, thirty seconds after ejaculating.
Suddenly Kim's finger flew away from her vagina, making no contact at all, but Kim's rocking didn't stop. It increased, if anything, and Kim's keening sounds started to have a frustrated overtone. I realized Kim was tantalizing herself now -- that she'd come close to orgasm and had to break contact to keep from coming, just as I'd told her a few minutes ago.
What control I had!
I stared for another minute while Kim went through another cycle of stroking herself and then having her finger jump away again when she got too close to orgasm. It occurred to me that if I was going to keep from assaulting Kim between now and Saturday, I'd better have her stop masturbating and keep away from physical commands like this, at least when I was watching her. Still, it took me a moment to be able to get up the will power to have her stop.
"OK, Kim," I said, "bring the fantasy to an end without climaxing, then go put your clothes back on and sit down at the kitchen table again." I got up and went into the downstairs bathroom to wipe the sticky semen off, then came back to the kitchen where Kim was once more seated with her eyes closed.
As I sat down at the table again, my thoughts were surprisingly far removed from sex; I was becoming more and more aware of the responsibility I'd taking on by hypnotizing Kim. I could see now how suggestible she was, how completely I could control her, and it made me worry a little. It was clear she wasn't faking, that she was really hypnotized. Kim was so modest normally, blushing when she left the tape downstairs or had to answer an embarrassing question under hypnosis, that she couldn't possibly just turn it off and start playing with herself in the living room without showing any sign she was aware I was watching. Kim was a bit flushed when she got into position on the Ottoman, but nothing like what she would have looked like if she'd known what was really happening. With somebody this suggestible, I realized I needed to be very careful about any hypnotic commands I used -- just as the author of that old book had warned.
I thought about this for a while, and then gave Kim a post-hypnotic command that whenever she was upset about anything or felt any particularly strong emotion, she should seek me out, then go into trance state and tell me about it. I figured that this way I'd learn if any suggestion I gave her was troubling her in some way. I added a more direct command that if Kim was ever doing anything because of hypnotic suggestion that might cause some kind of harm, physical or emotional, she was to stop acting under compulsion immediately and act normally. I had in mind some misunderstanding where she might start undressing in public, or that would make her unaware of traffic when she was walking on the street. I tried to make sure she understood what to do in such situations, asking several questions to check that she'd come out of a compulsive state right away.
Then I told Kim to seek me out every evening before bed, away from our housemates, so I could put her in a trance. I asked what appointments she had for the rest of the week, and learned she was uncommitted except for a tennis date on Saturday afternoon. I told her to beg off on new appointments so we'd have time to spend together.
I added another suggestion that got me kind of turned on again, telling Kim that until Saturday, whenever she tried to masturbate at night, she'd drift off to sleep before reaching climax. I thought about that for a moment, and added a command that she wouldn't think about trying to masturbate until she got into bed for the night, but if she did start touching herself at some other time of day, she wouldn't feel aroused. Her fingers would just glide around near her vagina, and she wouldn't actually be able to make contact. She wouldn't realize this was happening -- it would seem to her that she just had other things on her mind so she wasn't sensitive, and she'd know that when she got in bed for the evening she'd feel normal again, so she'd forget about it until bedtime.
After a bit of hesitation, I finally let Kim wake up, telling her she'd feel cheerful and happy, and would remember an enjoyable conversation we'd been having. After I counted to three, Kim came out of her trance in a split second, and immediately started giggling and telling me something funny that happened in one of her classes. After a moment the teakettle I'd put back on the stove started whistling, and I got up and made the tea. Kim looked a little puzzled as it was steeping, and later when I poured her a cup. I'd neglected to suggest this was a second pot -- that we'd already finished the first one in the hour she thought we'd been talking. But she obviously dismissed the anomaly and went on with her stories about school.
I got caught up in the conversation myself, responding to Kim's perkiness and the way she always had something to say to fill in any gaps. She told me about a great Science Fiction book she'd just read and promised to lend it to me, then recounted something about a Philosophy course she took when she was an undergraduate. I quoted an old "Beyond the Fringe" routine about Bertrand Russell questioning G. E. Moore that got her laughing so hard she made little snorting noises getting her breath. I'd heard her do this a few times before, and I know it doesn't sound very attractive, but I think Kim is so appealing that even when she wrinkles her nose and snorts she seems cute and ladylike to me.
After we'd been talking awhile. Dave and Ellen returned from their concert, and we opened a bottle of Chenin Blanc and socialized around the kitchen table. I was rather surprised under the circumstances that I was having such a good, convivial time. I put on a Dixieland CD I knew everyone liked, and later Ellen played an old Credence Clearwater record that had some good stuff. Now that I was no longer alone with Kim, I had a little time to sit back and watch her talking with our other housemates, so enthusiastic and vibrant! It made me want to watch her for hours, like an artwork in a museum. I suddenly noticed her body again and pictures flashed through my mind of the way she'd looked an hour before, nude on the ottoman. That made me flush, and I started to get another erection. Then I felt a different excitement, not exactly sexual, more like the exhilaration I used to have as a kid on Christmas morning -- because Kim and I were just starting! I looked at Kim and thought of some of the things I might do to turn her on, erotic pictures, so that I flushed even more.
To get back into things, I paid attention to the conversation again, and after awhile I was able to join in. I made everyone laugh without using any memorized stuff, just goofing around off the wall, trying to copy the way Jonathon Winters used to extemporize. I got a pretty good routine going about Microsoft nerds trying to develop software for Hollywood sleazeballs, and it went down well, with everybody laughing. I was pleased, since I like to make sure I'm not getting in a rut, quoting other people's routines all the time. Things quieted down after that and around 11:30, Dave said he had to get to sleep, and I realized I was tired myself, still recovering from the long push at work, so the party broke up and everyone went upstairs.
My room is the biggest since I pay the largest rent, and I have a private bath, but I needed something in the hall cabinet so I used the common bathroom where everyone else had already had their turn. I noticed as I came out that Kim was waiting in the hall in her robe, and as I moved toward my room she sort of fell in beside me. I'd forgotten about the command I gave that she should try to seek me out to be alone with me before bed! I went into my room and she followed, then I closed the door and had Kim sit in a chair. She didn't seem to be in a trance, just sort of dreamy and ready to sit where I told her. I figured this was what post-hypnotic suggestion was like.
"Listen to this, Kim. Antwerp . . . Battery . . . Rouge . . . Pulpy." I saw her eyes close and told her to go deeper into trance, then paused while I thought about what I wanted to say. I repeated the instructions that made Kim think I wasn't present, that she was listening to her own voice again, then asked a question I'd thought of.
"Kim, how did you feel earlier tonight after you sat down at the table with Bob, right around the time you had tea? Did you have any special thoughts? Were you concerned about anything?" I was mainly wondering how well the suggestion had worked to make her forget everything that happened under hypnosis.
"I felt great!" Kim said in a relaxed voice. "Bob and I had a really nice conversation and I lost track of time. It was after nine-thirty when we had tea and we must have talked for an hour by then. I was a little confused about that -- I thought I'd made some tea when I first sat down, but I didn't remember drinking it." Kim paused for a moment, then went on, "Oh, and when we were having the tea I was surprised how horny I felt, after masturbating only an hour before! I was really wet, and I thought about excusing myself to go to my room and do something about it, but I decided I was having too much fun talking. Anyway, I think I've been doing it too much recently."
Well Kim certainly hadn't remembered anything about the session. I wondered if she could remember other things I'd told her.
"Kim, you shouldn't remember this when you're not under hypnosis, but can you say what post-hypnotic commands you have about masturbating?"
"Sure," she answered instantly. "I can do it at night in bed, but I'll fall asleep before I reach climax. If I try to do it any other time I won't be able to make contact."
She sounded so matter-of-fact about this that I blushed. This was like a wet-dream fantasy of mine, and I realized I didn't want Kim to know, even unconsciously, that I'd subjected her to this.
"Do you think that you'll want to try to do it tonight?" I asked.
"Oh, definitely!" Kim sounded positive. "I feel very sexy right now."
"Good," I said, "Now I want add to the suggestion you already have. You'll fall asleep before climaxing, but first you'll get very close every night and tantalize yourself for a few minutes before you stop and fall asleep. Do you understand that."
"Yes. I'll get really close and tantalize myself every night at bedtime, then fall asleep before I get my orgasms."
"And you won't be able to make contact masturbating except at bedtime."
"Yes. Only at bedtime."
I was feeling rather mean about keeping Kim frustrated like this, especially this new injunction to make her tantalize herself before falling asleep, and I suddenly realized I could ask Kim if this was too hard on her.
"Is this the sort of thing you'd expect Bob to do when he has hypnotic control over you?" I asked. "Or is it too mean? The idea is to make you as horny as possible next Saturday, and then maybe Bob will tell you he's hypnotized you after you're alone together."
"Oh, yes!" Kim's face had a small lustful grin again. "This is exactly the sort of thing I fantasize about having Bob do to me. I've even frustrated myself like this one or two nights in a row, just to feel what it would be like to be Bob's slave. I'll probably fantasize about that when I'm tantalizing myself from now until Saturday."
"But nothing specific!" I said. "You shouldn't really think Bob is going to do anything on Saturday. Except that you'll be alone together in the house, of course."
"Sure, I understand," Kim answered thoughtfully. "Being alone with Bob on Saturday would figure in my fantasies anyway. I'll imagine becoming his sex-slave while I tantalize myself."
I couldn't think to add to that. I looked at Kim for a moment and began to imagine I could feel the warmth of her body as she sat in the chair close to me. I decided I'd better bring this to an end quickly.
I told Kim to forget everything about this hypnosis session (I'd have to make that automatic), and to come out of her trance as soon as she got into her room. I opened my door and told her to go to bed, then watched her walk to her room.
As I got into bed, I started to think a little about what I could do with Kim tomorrow to start getting ready for Saturday. I'd talk to her after breakfast and see how much time she had to spare from her schoolwork. Then my thoughts turned to what Kim was almost certainly doing in her bedroom at that very moment, and how I was in some sense acting on her sexually from the next room. She was going to be terribly horny on Saturday because of my directions -- so easy to turn on! Thinking about this, I stroked off in about fifteen seconds and had another intense ejaculation. Afterwards I felt exhausted and drifted off to sleep almost immediately.