The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

I spent my day in unashamed, blissful idleness: surfing the ‘net from my room, playing a little blackjack in the casino, surveying the lovely people idling on the beach. I deliberately avoided my charges, although I did spy them practicing on each through the little telescope on my deck. Claire sported a tantalizingly thin leopard print one-piece. It looked like a tan-through; if not for the busy print, it probably would have been see through as well. Monica in a simple black racing suit was also a treat for the eyes. The lady had class.

I went down a little early for dinner, flashed my VIP key, and got a premier table right away. While I waited for my students, I indulged in a little idle people watching.

A pair of women, both brunettes, at a distant table caught my eye. One was thin and spare, taking little nibbles from a salad; the other had broad shoulders and hips, and a mouth that moved constantly while chewing generous hunks of steak. Friends or lovers? I took in their body language: legs crossed toward each other, making a subtle circle of inclusion; hands stretched across the table, almost but not quite touching; long, unbroken stretches of direct eye contact. Definitely lovers, I decided.

Another table held a foursome. Two of them I quickly dubbed Barbie and Ken because of their impossibly good looks and country club clothes. Their companions were real people: a mousy-haired girl with big breasts and a heavyset, balding guy. She wore a peasant blouse and skirt, he a plain polo and jeans. What drew my attention, though, were their faces. They smiled and nodded a lot as Barbie and Ken dominated the conversation, but their eyes kept searching each other out. Something wasn’t right there.

My reflections were interrupted by the arrival of my students, looking relaxed and at ease. “You two look well rested,” I remarked as I rose to greet them.

Claire smirked. “Gee, I wonder why.”

We were all hungry, so I waited until dinner had been ordered, received, and mostly eaten before starting the discussion. “So?” I began, “How did your assignment go?”

“Well,” Monica answered. “We practiced once each in our room, then on the beach, then in the sauna after working out a little.”

“In the sauna was amazing,” Claire jumped in. “I dropped like a stone almost from the word go. Monica, too.”

“It was very easy to get comfortable wearing nothing but a big, soft towel,” Monica agreed. “After that we went back to our room and tried it a few more times. I think it’s safe to say we have the Dave Elman induction down pat.”

An impulse hit me, and I went with it. “Do you think so?”

Monica nodded, her eyes opening wider.

“All right, then,” I challenged. “Show me.”

Looking mildly confused, Monica shrugged her shoulders and turned to Claire. “Are you ready to be hypnotized, Claire?”

“Not Claire,” I said. “Me.”

Monica’s eyes darted over to me. I could see the doubts running behind them, then getting pushed abruptly aside. “Very well,” she conceded, scooting her chair closer to mine. “Are you ready to go into hypnosis now, Jack?” She smiled awkwardly at what was becoming a trite ritual.

“Ready,” I assured her, projecting confidence.

“Okay,” she said. “I want you to start by closing your eyes, Jack. Just let them close down, and I’d like you to relax the muscles around your eyes. Let them relax, completely relax, until they simply will not open no matter how hard you try. ...”

She had a smooth voice and a well-practiced manner. Before long I was drifting, following her velvet voice, feeling the waves of relaxation as she lifted and dropped my hand. I counted the numbers down and got maybe as far as 96 before they disappeared completely. Then Monica counted up to five and I was awake again.

My eyes opened and I saw her looking at me with ill-concealed anxiety. “That was very good,” I told her, smiling. She sighed and smiled back.

Claire practically jumped out of her seat. “My turn!”

Claire’s technique wasn’t quite as good as Monica’s—she spoke a little too quickly, a little too urgently—but having just been in hypnosis, it was easy for me to recall the state and go back. Go back I did, way down, losing the numbers almost immediately. I drifted, with no sense of time or place, until Claire counted me back up.

Monica’s face looked tense and she’d moved back away from me when I opened my eyes again. I started to process that, to recall the last few minutes, but I was interrupted by Claire. “How do you feel? How did I do?” She was squirming in her seat, eyes bright and mouth open, like an overexcited puppy.

“Fine, and fine,” I said. “You need to slow down a little on your delivery. Give the person time to assimilate what you’re saying and react to it. It helps sometimes if you drift into trance a little yourself as you do the induction. But you did well.”

It was time for the evening’s entertainment to begin. The familiar voice of Stu Redman came over the sound system to introduce Brain Drain, an improvisational comedy group. Monica excused herself, leaving Claire and me to enjoy the show.

Being a Chicagoan I’ve seen a lot of very good improv acts, and Brain Drain would be completely at home on stage with any of them. Four men and four women, they had everything that good improv needs: energy, balance, freshness, irreverence. The show was wonderful. Claire and I were still chuckling at parts of it as we made our way to the elevators. She pulled me along gently and I followed, quietly enjoying the way her muscles moved in her capris and halter.

About six other people got into the same elevator. I pushed the button for 12 and watched Claire. She stood by as people pressed buttons for 3, 7, 5, and 2 (Take the damned stairs! I grumbled silently). Her finger hovered over the 9 button for a moment. I felt a pang of disappointment when she pressed it.

In a few moments the elevator was empty except for the two of us. The counter reached 9 and the doors opened with a bong.

“I had a great time,” Claire said, standing in the doorway. “Thank you.” She held her arms out, inviting a hug.

I stepped forward to meet her. Her arms went around me, and her face turned up to mine for a kiss. It was a fairly chaste kiss—a brief meeting of closed lips. But the effect on me was electrical. My pulse quickened, my cock sprang forward into full erection, and I found myself in the grip of the strongest sexual desire I’d ever felt. My hands gripped Claire tightly and pulled her back into the elevator. My mouth opened and I thrust my tongue between her lips to find hers.

She backed away from me. I pursued her, pinning her into the corner by the control panel, and dropped to my knees. She gasped and tried to back away, but there was nowhere for her to go. “Hold on, Jack!” she protested. “Not here! Somebody might walk in on us.”

I ignored her—the only thing I cared about was how quickly I could get her pants off. I reached around her, found the STOP switch, and flipped it. The floor beneath us shuddered as the elevator came to an abrupt halt. My hands grabbed the waistband of her Capris and yanked them down, taking a pair of black G-string panties with them.

Her voice said, “Wait,” but her body was already responding to me. The scent of her juices filled my nose and drew me in, shutting off almost all conscious thought. I buried my face in her center, licking the moisture off every surface, probing for the places that I knew would bring a hitch to her breath.

Claire moaned, “Oh, my god,” and I felt her knees start to weaken. Standing quickly, I spun her around and bent her over, letting her grab the bar on the other side of the elevator car. With one hand I undid my belt and zipper and let my pants fall to the floor; with the other I reached around Claire, pushed up the halter, and kneaded a breast, feeling the plump nipple poking out at me. My boxers dropped onto the pile around my ankles, freeing my sword to find its sheath.

I plunged myself into Claire from behind, keeping her bent over, and pulled myself in as deeply as I could. Claire squealed and pushed back against me, squeezing my cock with her muscles as it worked in and out. Her breathing grew ragged. “That’s it,” she gasped. “Just ... a ... little ... bit ... uuunnnhhhh!!”

I couldn’t hold back any more. My body lurched forward and my cock convulsed as I joined her in orgasm. We stood there, jammed together with Claire’s face pressed against the side wall, until the climax loosed its grip and my knees buckled. I dropped to the floor and rested my head on Claire’s exposed bottom, holding her legs loosely with my weary arms. And in the aftermath, the memory of Claire’s voice came flooding back into my conscious mind: The next time I kiss you, Jack, you’ll feel an overwhelming, immediate urge to pull my pants down and have sex with me. You won’t care about anything else until that need is satisfied. You won’t remember this suggestion until after we’ve finished having sex, then it will come back to you and you will remember everything.

I looked up to see Claire staring at me from above. “Jesus Christ, Jack,” she panted.

“Well, what did you expect?” I could feel a tinge of anger rising through the post-coital high.

She blinked twice. “I expected that you’d get incredibly horny and that once we got to your room we’d have amazing sex.”

“Then that’s what you should have suggested.”

“I’m sorry, Jack,” she began, hitching up her pants.

I wasn’t letting her off that easily. “You should be,” I insisted. “That was a stupid, dangerous, irresponsible suggestion. We could both be in a lot of trouble tomorrow over this.”

“Huh? Why? Nobody saw us.”

Silently, I pointed to the plastic bubble in the elevator ceiling. Our faces reflected back at us, elongated by the shape of the bubble.

Claire’s jaw fell and her face turned six shades of red. “Oh, shit!” Then she burst into a fit of giggling, hiding her face from the camera we assumed was inside the bubble.

I stepped over to the control panel, flipped the switch from STOP back to RUN, and shook my head ruefully, imagining the security guard’s face during our performance. As the doors opened on the twelfth floor, Claire kissed me goodnight again. I punched the ninth button for her and let the doors close between us.

The ringing of the telephone nagged me out of a sound sleep the next morning. At first I groped the empty space to the right of the bed, where my nightstand is at home; then I noticed the sound coming from the other direction, and found the offending device. “Hello?”

“Good morning.”

It took me a moment to place the voice. “Monica?”

There was a tiny pause. “I woke you, didn’t I? I’m sorry.”

The cobwebs were slowly clearing. “It’s okay,” I told her. “What’s up?”

“I wanted to see if you were all right,” she said tentatively. “No ill effects or anything.”

“From what?”

There was a long silence. I winced as my higher brain functions began working again and I realized what was going on. “Forget I asked that,” I said. “I wasn’t entirely awake yet. Yes, I’m fine. No ill effects for either of us, as far as I know.” Except maybe one, I thought, remembering the security camera bubble.

“That’s good,” Monica replied, sounding a little relieved. “We don’t have a breakfast date set, do we?”

I looked at the clock: 8:50. “Not yet. I could meet you two down there at 9:30 if you like. Is that too early?”

“No, that’s fine. We’ll see you there. And Jack?”

“Yes?”

“I’m glad you’re all right.”

My girls were dressed down this time in shorts, tee shirts and sneakers. “Opting for comfort over fashion?” I queried, smiling.

They both shrugged. “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” Monica volunteered.

We helped ourselves to the buffet again. Claire was a little hesitant at first, but after we’d filled our plates with no sign of the busboy from the previous morning she seemed to relax. We kept the conversation light and casual while we ate; it wasn’t until our empty plates were neatly stacked beside us and our coffee cups mostly drained that we got down to business.

“Time for Lesson Two,” I announced. Both women sat up in their chairs and focused on me. “I was going to teach you a few more inductions and have you practice them.” Fixing my eyes on Claire, I continued. “However, given recent events, I think it more important that we have a serious discussion about formulating and using suggestions.”

Claire had the good grace to blush a little bit.

“For your purposes, there are really two kinds of suggestions you need to be concerned with: hypnotic suggestions and post hypnotic suggestions.

“Hypnotic suggestions are things you say to someone while they are in hypnosis that you want them to act on while in hypnosis.” I focused for a moment on Monica. “For example, I might say to you that your right arm feels very light and tingly, so light that it begins to lift off the arm of your chair.” Monica’s right arm lifted slightly off the chair, and her hand flexed. Her attention, however, stayed on me. Looking to Claire, I continued. “Or I might wonder if you’ve noticed yes how your eyes are becoming heavy and tired as I continue to speak.” She blinked heavily, also without seeming to realize it. “In fact, if you focus on my voice, you’ll find it very easy to relax into hypnosis without even realizing that you’re doing it. I don’t need to tell you to close your eyes and sleep now because you already know that you can go deeper and deeper all by yourself, all the while taking in everything I say to you. You may even find that as you take a deep breath and send a wave of relaxation from your head to your toes, you can easily remember all that I say to you even as your mind slips deeper and deeper into hypnosis.”

I paused to admire my work: two entranced ladies, hanging on my every word. Oh, the possibilities...

But no. Not yet, anyway. “Erickson was famous for his use of indirect suggestions with his clients. An indirect suggestion is a simple command embedded in an innocent-sounding sentence. The conscious mind sees the sentence as an abstract statement, but the subconscious mind picks up on the embedded command and acts on it. I used a number of indirect suggestions a few moments ago to place you into hypnosis. With your conscious mind busy listening to the informational content of what I said, the embedded suggestions went directly to your subconscious; you may not have even realized you were going into hypnosis until it had already happened. And as you listen to me, going deeper into hypnosis with every breath you take and every word I speak, you’ll realize that indirect suggestions are a powerful way to communicate with the subconscious, whether the person is already in hypnosis or not, which is why I use indirect suggestions a great deal in doing therapy. In entertainment, however, I tend to use direct hypnotic suggestions.

“Direct hypnotic suggestions are often used to deepen the hypnotic state, like this one: each time I touch your hand like this...” I reached over and gently pressed down on Monica’s hand, then Claire’s. “... you will go deeper into hypnosis.” I pressed their hands again and watched them drop deeper. “Direct hypnotic suggestions can be very simple, as with the example I just gave you, or very complex as with the suggestions I use in my show.

“Post hypnotic suggestions are instructions given to someone while in hypnosis that are intended to take effect when the person is awake, sometimes much later. For example, any time I give Claire the command, ‘Sleep, Claire’ she goes back into deep hypnosis for me.

“There are some basic rules to keep in mind when formulating good suggestions. The first rule is, keep it positive. The subconscious is like a child; it tends to disregard negative words, so a suggestion like, ‘You don’t want to smoke’ is likely to be accepted as ‘You want to smoke.’ A better suggestion might be, ‘Every day you find the desire to smoke reducing, becoming less and less a part of your life.’ In my show, I tell people that they are stuck to their seats instead of telling them that they can’t get out of their seats in order to keep the suggestion positive.

“The next rule is, be specific. The subconscious is very literal, and needs to be told exactly what you want it to do or believe in order to get the results you are looking for. The subconscious disregards anything it doesn’t understand, and any suggestion that is vague enough to be interpreted in multiple ways will probably be interpreted in a way other than you intended. In college, I once suggested to a girl that she would come every time her boyfriend touched her pussy. A few days later, the boyfriend told me that my suggestion hadn’t done anything for their sex life, but that every time he petted her cat his girlfriend would stop whatever she was doing and stand next to him. Her subconscious interpreted slang differently than I intended her to.

“Being specific also means remembering the details. If I were to give you a suggestion to get up and walk over to the buffet table, you might find yourself stumbling around trying to find the buffet table with your eyes still closed. To make that suggestion safe and effective, I’d have to say that you will open your eyes, stand up, and walk to the buffet table. And to be sure you didn’t start before I wanted you to, I’d tell you to do it on the count of three. I count to three a lot with people because it leaves no room for doubt as to when I want them to do something. And as important as knowing when a suggestion should start is knowing when it should stop. If I tell you that whenever I snap my fingers you will become thirsty, and leave it at that, then you might stay thirsty for hours or days no matter how much you drank. But if I say that you will remain thirsty until I snap my fingers again, or until you take 3 sips of water, then there is a definite ending to the suggestion.

“The most important thing to remember is that no matter how deep in hypnosis a person may be, she will never accept a suggestion that violates her personal moral code. If I were to tell one of you to go and French kiss the busboy, and you had a strong objection to doing so, you would come out of hypnosis immediately and the suggestion would have no affect on you at all. When I used that suggestion with Claire yesterday, I knew she would obey it because she’d told us herself that she found the idea exciting.

“It may seem to you that during my show I had people doing things they would never do normally, but it’s really a matter of context. What people find morally acceptable depends on the circumstances. For example, an average woman might strongly object to being asked to enter a room, strip naked, and allow a man she’s never met before to touch her breasts and genitals; however, if that room is a doctor’s office and the man is a doctor conducting a physical examination, then the suggestion becomes acceptable to most people. Similarly, people who know they are part of an adult-oriented hypnosis show at a resort known for encouraging hedonistic behavior might find themselves willing to do a number of things that they wouldn’t do under other circumstances.”

Enough lecturing; it was time for a practical exercise. “In a few moments, I’m going to count to three. When I reach three you will lift your heads, open your eyes, and look at me, still remaining deeply hypnotized. You’ll be able to look at me and follow my suggestions without disturbing your hypnotic state. One, two, three.”

Both heads lifted and looked at me. To a casual onlooker, they would seem to be merely paying close attention to me. From my shirt pocket I produced two hotel pens and six blank index cards, the latter taken from the spare section at the back of my file box. “I am now placing in front of you a pen and an index card,” I told them. “When I count to three, I want you to pick up the pen and write down on the index card three post hypnotic suggestions that you are certain you would follow if I gave them to you. When you finish writing, you will put the pens down and wait for your next instructions. One, two, three.”

I watched as they picked up the pens and wrote, slowly and deliberately, on the cards. When they had both put their pens down, I pulled the cards over to me and labeled them, then tucked them in my shirt pocket. “Very good. Now I’m putting another blank index card in front of you. At the count of three, I want you to pick up the pen and write on the card three suggestions that you are not sure whether you would accept or not. When you are done writing, put the pen down and wait.”

Again I gave them a three count and watched while they wrote. It took a little longer this time, but soon I had both women sitting still and waiting for me. I labeled and pocketed the second set of cards and handed out a third. “Now, at the count of three, I want you to pick up the pen and write three suggestions that you are certain you would never follow, no matter what the circumstances. When you finish writing I want you to put the pen down, close your eyes, and allow yourself to drift deeper, ignoring everything you hear until I touch you on the shoulder.”

At the final three count they picked up the pens and wrote, taking no time to consider the words. When both girls had their eyes closed, I added the last cards to my collection. I’d look at them later; people were starting to wander into the dining room looking for lunch. Walking around the table, I touched Claire on the shoulder and spoke quietly into her ear. “When I let go of your shoulder, I want you to count to five and bring yourself out of hypnosis, completely awake, remembering everything that happened except what you wrote on the index cards. Whenever you try to remember what you wrote on those cards, all you will remember is that you should not remember. Once you are awake, you will get up and leave us. You can go anywhere you like except my room. After we have dinner this evening you will come back to my room with me for a private lesson using the index cards.”

I let go of Claire’s shoulder and watched as she brought herself out of trance. Her eyes fluttered open and found me. She let out a heavy sigh and stood up slowly. “That’s it for now?”

“That’s it.”

She glanced briefly at the still figure of Monica. “I guess I’ll see you at dinner, then. Tell Monica I’ll wait for her upstairs.” She gave me a brief kiss and headed on her way.

After watching her go, I placed a hand on Monica’s shoulder. “From now on, Monica, whenever I say to you, ‘Sleep, Monica’ you will immediately and easily go back into hypnosis, just as you are right now, without even realizing you are doing so. When I let go of your shoulder, I want you to count to five and bring yourself out of hypnosis, completely awake, remembering everything that happened except what you wrote on the index cards. Whenever you try to remember what you wrote on those cards, all you will remember is that you should not remember. Once you are awake, you will get up and go back to your room, where Claire is waiting for you. At exactly four o’clock this afternoon you will come to my room, room 1201, for a private lesson using the index cards.”

By the time I returned to my seat, her eyes were open and watching me. “There are so many things I want to ask you right now,” she said, “but I feel as though an invisible hand is pulling me out of the chair.” She stood up and smiled a little nervously. “Room 1201, four o’clock.”

I smiled back, projecting reassurance. “See you then.”

As Monica walked away, I found myself studying the sway of her hips and quite enjoying it.

I spent the middle of the day strolling around the grounds, enjoying the scenery and letting my mind wander. By 3:30 I was back in my room. I took a cold bottle of apple juice from the mini fridge and sat down at the desk. Taking the index cards from my shirt pocket, I laid Monica’s out in front of me in a column in the order in which she’d filled them out.

Forget my name.

See, hear, or smell something that isn’t really there.

Become sexually aroused.

Those were the things her subconscious felt she would definitely do. My eyebrows rose at the list on the second card:

Disrobe in private.

Get drunk.

Act out a sexual fantasy.

The user liked the possibilities there, of course. The “absolutely never” list read like a challenge:

Disrobe in public or on stage.

Act like an animal.

Masturbate in view of someone else.

I rearranged the living room a little bit, moving the coffee table away from the couch and one of the two easy chairs closer to it, and armed myself with a red pen. Then I settled into one of the chairs and pictured my guidance counselor lying on the couch, relaxed and deeply hypnotized, her breathing growing faster and deeper as her hands played over her body, aroused from within by my words ...

A soft knock on the door brought me back to reality with a start. “One second,” I said, willing my raging hard-on to subside quickly. It wasn’t time yet, but I assumed it was Monica at the door.

Wrong. I opened it to find a tall, well-sculpted man in a security guard’s uniform standing before me. “Mr. Torrance?”

“Yes,” I replied cautiously.

That was when I noticed the manila envelope tucked under his right arm. He offered the envelope to me. “Sgt. Parks, sir. I was instructed to give this to you by Mr. Santiago, the night manager. He said to inform you that there are no other copies.”

Even as he was adding the last sentence, I knew what it had to be. I thanked the sergeant and let the door close as I opened the envelope. Inside, as expected, was a T180 VHS video tape. The label, made on one of those thermal labeling machines, read “ELEV B2, 11-7.” There was also a business card for Galeno Santiago, Assistant Manager, Hospitality.

My watch said it was only 3:47, so I had to take a quick peek. I flipped on the TV and opened the cabinet below it. The tape slid easily into the VCR. I tapped a few buttons on the remote, and was rewarded with a sharp black-and-white picture of the inside of an elevator, taken from a high vantage point near the back of the car. Bright white letters in the lower right corner indicated the date and time: the night before, at 11:02pm and counting. Another set of indicators in the lower left showed the floor and direction. My thumb pressed the fast forward button as I reconstructed the evening in my mind: we’d met for dinner at seven, and had a slow and leisurely meal; then came the after-dinner wrap-up and the final set of inductions; Brain Drain had taken the stage at about 9:00 and done two sets with an intermission between them. I figured Claire and I had hit the elevator at around 11:30, maybe 11:40.

I was close—the tape counter read 11:47:18 when I spotted us entering the picture. I goosed it forward a little more and watched the others shuffle in and out of the elevator in double-time until we were left alone, dropping back to normal play just in time to see the kiss that had started it all. For a security camera, the quality was impressive. The range of emotions on Claire’s face—mischievousness, then surprise, then worry, then raw arousal—came through clearly. In fact, most of our anatomy was clearly visible. Nothing like starring in your own home-made porno flick, I reflected wryly.

Another knock came from the door. It was time for Monica’s visit. I powered off the equipment and closed the cabinet before letting her in. She was still dressed in the white running shorts and short tee that she’d worn at breakfast.

“Very impressive,” she said, surveying my suite with wide-open eyes. “I think your living room is larger than our whole space.”

“Rank has its privileges, I suppose.” I shrugged and gave her my most self-deprecating smile.

She stood awkwardly in the middle of the room, hands folded in front of her. “I’m a little nervous,” she confessed.

“I can see that,” I said, trying to make my voice as reassuring as possible. “Any idea why?”

Her lips pursed and her eyes looked into the distance for a moment. “A feeling of uncertainty, I suppose. Wondering what’s going to happen up here without my chaperone.”

I tried disarming it with a joke. “Well, I’m not going to bonk you on the head, tie you up, and do unspeakable things to you.”

I didn’t quite get the reaction I was expecting. She looked sharply at me, her eyes meeting mine. “But you wouldn’t have to, would you? You can just say two words and here I’d be, putty in your hands, just like those people on stage.”

Ah, so that was it. “You don’t really believe that, do you? I thought I’d made it clear this morning that everyone has limits, and that no suggestion is strong enough to make anyone break those limits. Even the reinduction trigger is subject to that rule, Monica—if you don’t trust me, it won’t work.”

She was nodding, but not necessarily agreeing. “Yes, that’s what you told us. That also agrees with everything else I’ve heard or read about hypnotism, barring some very strange fiction that Claire likes to read online. But it also flies in the face of what I saw the other night, Jack. Not to mention Claire throwing herself at that bus boy yesterday. Which am I supposed to believe?”

“I explained that to you already. Claire wasn’t averse to following the suggestion—she even said herself that would be hot.”

“Yes, I know. And, to be fair, Claire does seem to be looking to walk on the wild side on this trip; she told me as much before we’d even left home. But am I supposed to believe that every woman on your stage that night was a closet exhibitionist who secretly yearned to expose herself to a room full of people? Even here, doesn’t that seem just a little too easy an explanation, Jack?”

“There was nothing easy about it.” Whoa, Jack, I cautioned myself, don’t get defensive. I blinked twice and started over. “Look, Monica,” I said, “I could stand here and tell you about how my opening monologue was designed to encourage people to come up who wouldn’t mind flashing a little skin. I could give you a long lecture about how a lot of people are just looking for a chance to do wild things without anyone being able to judge them for it, because they ‘just couldn’t help it.’ I could explain the sequence of steps I used to make sure those people would be okay with what I asked them to do before I ever asked them to do it. But in the end, it’s not an intellectual thing. It’s a gut thing. Instead of standing here debating whether a hypnotized person has free will or not, why don’t you let me prove it to you right now? Will you trust me to do that?”

Monica was looking off into the distance. “I do trust you,” she finally said. “I’m just not sure I trust myself.”

I stepped forward and took her hands in mine. “Then let me show you that you can.”

She looked straight into my eyes and nodded.

“Sleep, Monica.”

I caught her in my arms as she crumpled. With a skill born of practice, I scooped her up in my arms and laid her out on the couch, giving her deepening suggestions all the while. And in the back of my head, I was calculating risks.

Years before, I’d had a similar conversation with my old mentor. We’d had a lot of spirited discussions—he was a firm believer in learning through discovery rather than through lecture—and I was certain that, common teachings aside, a deeply hypnotized subject could be talked into anything given the chance. So my old professor proved his point with a practical demonstration, and I learned the lesson in dramatic and lasting fashion. Now I’d use the same method to pass on the lesson to Monica.

“Now, Monica,” I said softly, “you are very deeply hypnotized. You may feel as if anything I say, you must accept and obey. In a few moments, I am going to count to three. On the count of three you will open your eyes, stand up, and walk out to my patio. When you reach the patio you will take off all of your clothing and drop it over the railing.” Monica began to twitch, her body suddenly looking uncomfortable. “Then you will take the elevator to the lobby level and walk into the dining room to the stage.” She fidgeted more, and her head started to move back and forth. “Once on stage, you will sit down and masturbate in front of everyone there.”

Monica’s eyes popped open. “I will not!” she insisted, rising to a sitting position.

I smiled and counted to three. Monica sat there and stared at me, fuming.

“Tell me something,” I said. “Do you feel the slightest urge to go stand on my patio and strip?”

“No,” she answered emphatically.

“Or to go down to the dining room and masturbate?”

“Absolutely not.”

“And you’re not hypnotized anymore either, are you?”

That stopped her cold. “No,” she replied cautiously, “I don’t think I am.”

“Exactly,” I responded. “So, who was really in control?”

Monica sighed and her eyes narrowed. “I was,” she conceded. “And wipe that smirk off your face, Jack. What would you have done if I’d started walking toward the patio?”

I did my best to look innocent and shocked. “Stop you, of course.”

“Hmmmm.” She studied my face. “Before or after I’d taken my clothes off?”

Was that a tiny gleam in her eye? “I’ll take the fifth on that,” I joked, “on the grounds that it’s a moot point because I knew you’d never do it.”

“And what made you so sure of that?”

“These,” I answered, holding her index cards in the air. “Do you remember these?”

“No,” she said, looking at the cards in my hand. “In fact, I distinctly remember that you told me not to remember what’s on those.”

I nodded. “It’s something my old professor did with me. Each card has three things written on it, three hypnotic suggestions. This card has three things your subconscious is positive you would do if asked; this one has three things your subconscious isn’t sure whether you would do or not; and the last one has three things your subconscious is positive you would never do. Would you like to see them?”

I held out the cards to her eager hand, and watched as she read them. As Monica read her writing, a bright pink flush formed on her face and worked its way down her neck. “My subconscious,” she remarked after reading all three cards, “is a blabbermouth.”

“That’s one of its more appealing qualities. I’m guessing that your mind chose to interpret the request in the context of things I might ask of you in a show. But you can see that I took two of the things on your ‘never’ list and told you to do them, and it immediately broke the trance. You felt no desire whatsoever to carry out the instructions.”

“Which proves what you were saying all along,” she finished for me. “There are limits to what hypnotic suggestions can do.”

“Exactly,” I agreed. “Ready to finish the lesson?”

She shifted a little, getting more comfortably seated on the couch, and then nodded.

“Sleep, Monica.” I watched in satisfaction as she dropped on cue, slumping down into the cushions on the couch. I never get tired of seeing it.

“And now, Monica,” I told her, “I’m going to give you more suggestions to follow. The suggestions I give you will be completely acceptable to your subconscious mind; if you feel that you can’t follow a suggestion, you can simply say ‘No’ to me and I’ll adjust the suggestion until you are comfortable with it.”

I watched her body closely for physical signs of agreement. Her head moved up and down infinitesimally. “That’s good. Before we demonstrate a suggestion from that second card, we’ll start with something you already know you can do.” I approached Monica and sat down on the couch next to her. “I’m going to lift your arm now. Let me do all the work. And as you feel me lifting your arm, I’m sure it will feel perfectly natural to you that your arm becomes stiff and rigid, as if there were a steel bar supporting it from underneath. Stiff and rigid, pointing straight out from your body. And now that your arm is in position, stiff and straight, I know that you can let it slowly drop back down beside you no faster than your mind can recall a time in the past when you’ve been extremely sexually aroused, perhaps even the most aroused you’ve ever been. And when you have that moment in mind when you were the most sexually aroused you’ve ever been, you’ll find that your arm becomes loose and limp and relaxed again, coming comfortably to rest next to you.”

I watched while Monica’s arm slowly lowered itself, her mind searching its memory for the right moment. Then, all of a sudden, it relaxed and dropped the rest of the way. I could see the color rising in Monica’s cheeks again and I knew she was thinking of her moment. “That’s right. And you may even notice that recalling that time of arousal causes you to become aroused again, even now. And it’s okay to let yourself become increasingly aroused, to feel that lust and desire overcome you, and to let that feeling become magnified, become twice as strong, each time I say your name. And the more times I say your name, the more aroused you become, until it’s perfectly natural, perfectly normal, for you to begin wanting to touch yourself in the places that are most pleasurable to you. You may even find that it’s more comfortable for you if you take your shirt and shorts off so that you can more easily reach those places that you long to touch. And once you’ve done that, once you’ve taken off your shirt and shorts and begun to touch yourself in those most pleasurable places, it’s okay to allow yourself to experience a very intense, very powerful orgasm. Only when you’ve had that intense, powerful orgasm will you return to whatever state of arousal may be normal for you under the circumstances.

“And now, on the count of three, I want you to open your eyes and return to your normal waking state. Your subconscious knows what it’s been told to do, and will take care of that naturally and automatically, letting your conscious mind remember only that which it needs to remember for you to enjoy the experience to its fullest.”

I counted her up slowly and watched her face as she came out. The flush of arousal remained, coloring her cheeks and down her neck. To help her subconscious suppress the memories she didn’t need, I used a simple misdirection. “How many students did you say you work with at school, Monica?”

Her mind ran to fetch the information, even as her body reacted to the sound of her name by quickening its breathing and deepening its color. “About 350.”

I nodded. “Does it seem a little too warm in here, Monica? You look a bit flushed.”

She fought back a moan as her arms folded themselves across her midsection. “It is a bit,” she said.

“I’m sorry, Monica. Let me find the thermostat and turn up the air conditioning a bit.” I got up and headed for the bedroom, leaving her squirming on the couch.

The thermostat really was in the bedroom, although for my purposes it didn’t really matter. I had no intention of adjusting it; I just wanted Monica to feel that she was alone and in private. “This may take a few minutes, Monica,” I called. “This thing has more buttons and settings than a small battleship.”

I heard her moan softly and then I made a most happy discovery: the full-length mirror on the closet door, if angled properly, would give me a view of the couch in the living room. Moving quietly, I pulled it open just enough to put Monica in the center of the reflection. She was pawing at her clothing already.

“Did I tell you how much I like the name Monica?” I asked rhetorically, watching her arch her back in response. “All my life I’ve been surrounded by Monicas. I have an aunt named Monica; my first girlfriend was named Monica; my old professor’s wife was also named Monica.” At that point she practically tore off her tee shirt and flung it to the side. I could see the flaming red patch of skin covering her chest and abdomen, testifying to the extent of her arousal. “Now, I suppose, since that whole Lewinsky mess, nobody is going to be naming their little girl Monica for a while. And that’s a shame, because Monica is such a beautiful name.”

Very beautiful, I thought to myself as I watched her kick her shorts across the room. She was wearing a very pretty lace bra and matching G-string panties. There was already a dark spot in the middle of the panties. As I watched in the mirror, one of her hands slipped down inside them while the other pushed one bra cup out of the way and kneaded a breast. Her eyes were closed and her face slack. Just for fun, I walked back out into the living room and sat in a chair facing the couch. “Is that better, Monica?”

Her eyes opened wide and locked on me, then slammed shut again as her entire body shuddered and heaved. She squealed and grunted her way through the climax, having just enough presence of mind to pull her hands out and back to her sides but not enough to remember to cover her breast again. She had a lovely, pink, erect nipple and a perfectly formed breast. Thanks to the sheerness of the G-string fabric, I could also tell that she was a natural redhead with very neat trimming habits. I sat quietly, taking all of this in and becoming increasingly aware of my own erection, while Monica rode out her orgasm. Then, when she started to move again, I triggered her back into hypnosis.

“And now,” I told her, “as you feel the afterglow of a most satisfying orgasm, you can allow the arousal to fade away, back to your normal level. You’ll find that hearing me say your name will no longer cause you to become more aroused unless you want to be.

“And there are a few things I’d like you to remember now about the experience you’ve just had. First, I’d like you to notice that I used a number of indirect suggestions to achieve the result you experienced. I used constructions such as ‘you may notice ...’ and ‘it’s okay to ...’ to turn a direct suggestion into an indirect one. And because the suggestions were indirect, your conscious mind ignored them but your unconscious mind heard them and accepted them easily. I also linked an obvious, unavoidable event to a suggestion that was really completely unrelated, creating a cause and effect situation where there really was none. For example, I told you that your arm would go down only as fast as you could think of a time when you were sexually aroused; normally, of course, you arm and your memory have nothing to do with each other, but by linking them together I made sure your unconscious mind would accept both statements as inevitable.

“You may also notice that I created a situation in which you would feel the least possible reason to resist doing what I wanted you to do. Because you wrote that you might be willing to undress in private, I first created an emotional state for you in which undressing would be a reasonable and natural thing to do—a state of advanced sexual arousal. Then, I left the room while the suggestions took effect, giving you as much privacy as possible while still being close enough to observe you and give verbal cues.

“And finally, of course, I used a posthypnotic trigger: that saying your name would increase your state of arousal. I’d like you to remember those points, consciously and unconsciously, whenever you are in a position to give someone else suggestions. You’ll find that as you practice formulating suggestions and giving them to people you’ll learn to recognize when using indirect suggestion is more likely to get you the results you want than using direct suggestion. Both kinds of suggestion are appropriate and useful.

“And now, I’d like to show you just how powerful and creative your mind really is. At the count of three, I’d like you to open your eyes and look at me. You’ll be able to talk to me, and to answer my questions, while remaining deeply hypnotized and following my suggestions. One ... two ... three. Eyes open, looking at me, still deeply hypnotized.”

Monica’s eyes opened slowly and came to rest on me. “On the second card,” I said, “you wrote that one thing you might do under hypnosis is to get drunk. Did you mean that I might be able to have you drink a lot of alcohol until you become drunk?”

She nodded at. “Yes.”

“Do you get drunk very often?”

“Not often,” she answered. “Sometimes at a big party, I’ll lose track and drink too much.”

“Does it bother you when you get drunk?”

“Not at the time. I get very flirty and loose when I drink too much, and I have a lot of fun. But it makes me miserably sick the next day.”

I nodded, all kinds of interesting ideas popping up in my mind. “I’d like for you to choose a time in your past when you got extremely drunk, and had a tremendous amount of fun doing it. When you can remember such a time, I’d like you to tell me about it.”

Monica paused. I could almost see the wheels turning behind her eyes while her subconscious shuffled through her memories. “My twenty-fifth birthday party,” she told me. “Claire arranged it all: a private party room with an open bar at a hotel, a suite for us to crash in when we needed to, a DJ, the works. And somehow, she and her boyfriend Robb talked me into trying shots of tequila with them. Before I realized it, I was laughing at everything that anyone said and holding on to people because the room kept spinning around. I woke up the next morning in the suite, in the same bed with Claire, Robb, and Robb’s friend Shawn. We were all naked, and none of us could remember who did what with whom. Our hangovers were so bad we almost didn’t make checkout time.”

I took a deep breath and willed my erection down before it ripped through my pants. “Thank you,” I said. “Let your eyes close down now and drift even deeper into hypnosis.”

Clearing my throat, I continued the lecture. “For the past several minutes you’ve been responding to direct suggestions. Direct suggestions can be just as effective as indirect ones as long as you are working in the short term. For behavior modifications, indirect suggestions typically work best. And now, we’ll use the power and creativity of your mind to demonstrate a post-hypnotic suggestion. In a few moments I’m going to count to three. At the count of three you will wake up, feeling completely refreshed and alert, totally comfortable and at ease even though you are not dressed. It will feel perfectly natural and okay for you to be undressed in my presence. Your subconscious mind will allow you to consciously remember only as much of this session as you need to for maximum enjoyment of the results. And every time I say the word ‘drink’ to you, you will immediately feel as though you’ve had a shot of tequila and it is taking full effect. Each time I say ‘drink’ you will feel the effects of an additional tequila shot. These will be special tequila shots, though: no matter how many shots you have, you will never become sick from these drinks. If you have enough drinks to make you pass out, you will slip into a deep hypnotic sleep instead of becoming unconscious. Then you will listen to my voice and accept more suggestions.”

I counted her up slowly and watched as she woke up. “Feeling a little cooler?” I asked, again to distract her mind from the trance itself.

She looked down at herself, noted her bare breast, and tucked it back inside her bra. “Yes, I’m very comfortable right now.”

“Good. Can I get you something to drink?”

Her face blanked for an instant. “It’s a little early for me,” she said, indicating the clock. “But I won’t object if you want something.”

“I was actually thinking about a soft drink,” I corrected, watching the quick eye flash as the second “drink” kicked in. “I usually don’t drink alcohol in the afternoons either. How about a Sprite?”

“Sure, why not?” Monica was smiling broadly and sinking into the couch. Her pupils were beginning to dilate.

I poured some cold Sprite from the mini fridge into a glass and brought it to her. “Drink this,” I told her. “It’ll help wet your whistle.”

She drank some, but tilted the glass too quickly. A long line of Sprite dribbled down her neck, between her breasts, and down her flat belly. “Whoopsie,” she giggled. “I wet the wrong whistle.”

Ever gallant, I grabbed a towel from the bathroom and offered it to her. “You can do it if you want,” she volunteered. So I gently dabbed her front with the towel, starting at the neck and working my way down. Monica arched her back and opened her legs, stretching sensuously while I patted her down with my towel. When I reached her groin area, she grabbed my neck and pulled me down to her face. “If you’re going to do that,” she said, “you can at least kiss me.”

I wasn’t at all averse to that idea, so I kissed her. It was long and hot, her lips and tongue sliding over mine. And while we kissed, I rubbed the towel up and down over her crotch. “You’re a great kisser,” she told me, slurring her words a little bit. Then she buried her nose in my chest and inhaled deeply. “Mmmmm, you smell good, too.”

“Careful with that drink,” I cautioned. “You wouldn’t want to spill it before you get a chance to drink it.”

Monica blinked heavily, her eyes losing focus. “You better take it,” she slurred, thrusting the glass in my direction. “And shee if you can get the room to shtop shpinning around sho much.”

“Okay,” I said, taking the glass from her. “Is there anything else you’d like?”

“I really wanna seduce you,” she mumbled. “Why don’t you carry me to your bed, lover?”

God, was I ever tempted! My cock screamed at me to do it, to take her to bed and help her out of the rest of her clothes and screw her in every position we both know. But no, that wasn’t the purpose of the lesson.

“Drink. Drink. Drink.”

I watched Monica’s eyes roll back into her head and her body slump into a corner of the couch. “That,” I told her, “was your lesson in posthypnotic suggestion. If you remember the structure of the suggestion I gave you, it will be easy for you to formulate suggestions to use with other people. The one thing I did not do with you, which we talked about this morning, was to give you a time when the suggestion would stop working; that was because I intended to take you back into hypnosis and remove it, which is what I will do now.

“On the count of three, Monica, you will wake up feeling completely sober, refreshed, relaxed, and comfortable. All of the tequila shots will have worn off completely, and the word ‘drink’ will no longer have any special significance to you. You will always feel completely comfortable in my presence, even without your clothes, and as always your subconscious mind will allow your conscious mind to remember only what it needs to for maximum enjoyment of the experience. One, two, three.”

Her eyes came back into focus, and she sat up on the couch. I picked up her clothes and then took a seat in the nearest armchair, the shirt and shorts in my lap to help hide my erection. “Any questions?” I asked.

I could see her rifling her memory. “Why are there long blocks of time that I don’t remember?”

“I told your subconscious to limit what you remember to only enough for you to fully enjoy the experience. So if there’s something missing, it’s something you think might spoil the fun if you remembered it right now.”

She looked mildly suspicious. “You didn’t leave any triggers in my mind for later, did you?”

“Just one,” I assured her. “The one that lets me put you back into hypnosis quickly. We may use that a few more times before the week is out.”

She thought about it, then nodded. “Any homework?”

I hadn’t thought about it, but an idea came quickly to mind. “Just this: between now and tomorrow morning, decide on three suggestions you think will work if you try them on Claire. One you’ll do with indirect suggestion, one with direct, and one as a posthypnotic suggestion. Don’t tell Claire what they are.”

Monica gave me one more nod.

“Class dismissed,” I said, handing Monica her shirt and shorts. She took them and dressed with a strange, speculative smile on her face.

Standing in my doorway as I let her out, she turned back to me. “You could’ve had me in your bed so easily,” she said. “I even asked you to do it. Why didn’t you?”

I looked into those clear, blue eyes and said the first thing that came to mind. “I’ll be asking myself that same question for a long time, I think.”

Dinner turned into an extended tease for poor Claire. She tried valiantly to get us to talk about Monica’s afternoon session, but with zero success. Each attempt we deflected into safe territory. It was fun, in a mildly sadistic way.

Finally dinner came to an end, and Monica and I decided to give Claire a break. Monica stayed behind to catch the evening’s entertainment while Claire and I headed for the elevators. Claire was in a mint green open-backed cocktail dress that shimmered as she moved and managed to cling to all the right places without looking tight.

The doors opened at the seventh floor and the elderly couple with whom we’d been sharing the car left. “Alone again,” Claire noted with a wink.

I pulled her gently back until her bottom was pressed lightly against me, my hands resting on her hips. Then I put my mouth by her ear and said, “Sleep, Claire.” She fell back against me, head lolling to one side. I held her firmly, keeping her on her feet. “You can feel yourself sliding deep, deep into hypnosis. Your body is relaxing more and more with each breath, unconcerned because you can feel my arms holding you up. And as you sink deeper into hypnosis with each breath you take and with each beat of your heart, you may begin to notice that you can stand on your legs and support your own weight, even as you continue to relax every other part of your body.”

Her legs responded, taking her weight. All I had to do was provide a little balance assistance. “When you hear the elevator doors open, Claire, I want you to open your eyes and follow me to my room, remaining deeply hypnotized even as you do.”

The red numbers changed to 12, the elevator dinged, and the doors slid open. Claire opened her eyes and stood still, staring forward. It took me a half second to realize I’d said “follow me,” so she was waiting for me to go first. I stepped out from behind her and walked out of the elevator. Sure enough, she followed close behind.

Once inside the entrance to my room, she stopped again. “Claire, I want you to walk over to the couch, take off your shoes, and lie down face up on the couch. Once you are lying down you can close your eyes, adjust your body position until you are completely comfortable, and drift a hundred times deeper into hypnosis. You can ignore every sound until you feel me touch your shoulder.”

I watched, enjoying the view while Claire walked over to the couch and followed her instructions. I waited to see her relax and drop way down, then went about my business. I put out the Do Not Disturb sign, turned on a table lamp, and sat down to review Claire’s cards from that morning.

Go back into hypnosis on command

Forget what happens during a trance

Follow you to your room and have sex with you

Have an orgasm on command

Strip in public

Be tied up for sex

Have sex with someone other than you

Smoke

Commit a crime

The first card gave me nothing new to work with—Claire had already done all of those things the night we’d met. The second offered some possibilities, and made me briefly wish that I’d taken Claire first so we could go down to the beach. The final card told me that as far as she was concerned, I could pretty much do anything I wanted.

But this isn’t about what you want, the teacher admonished. You’re supposed to be teaching this girl about types of suggestions and the limits of what hypnosis can do.

My eyes followed the slow rise and fall of her chest as she lay entranced on my couch, and I felt the user sneer. She’s no innocent. She loves to play and to be played with. She’ll be disappointed if she wakes up still wearing that dress.

There was a thought. I leaned over and touched Claire on the shoulder. “Claire, I want you to come up now to a level where you can hear and respond to my suggestions physically. When you are ready, I want you to stand up but remain deeply hypnotized.”

I waited a minute or two, watching some color return to Claire’s face as her metabolism revved up a little. Then, with the slow, hesitant movements typical of subconscious control, she slowly sat up and rose to her feet.

“That’s right,” I told her. “And now, Claire, I’m going to demonstrate for you direct hypnotic suggestion. You’ve already accepted and followed a number of direct suggestions tonight: to follow me from the elevator, to lie down and sleep, and now to stand up while remaining deeply hypnotized. For the next demonstration, you won’t be needing your clothes, so I’m going to help you to take them off now.”

As good as my word, I unfastened the dress and let it fall to the floor at her feet. She wore nothing under it except for a cream-colored thong, which I also eased down her long legs. Lifting one foot at a time, I picked up the clothing and hid it behind my chair, out of her sight. Then, enjoying the view, I had her lie down again in the same position as before.

“And now, Claire, we’ll use direct suggestion to create an illusion. Your subconscious knows that you are naked now, but when you wake up from this trance your conscious mind will believe that you are still dressed in the clothes you wore to dinner. Everything that you see, feel, hear, or sense in another way will confirm for your conscious mind that you are actually fully dressed. I will snap my fingers once, and when I do that, you will feel as if your clothing had suddenly dissolved, just like you did during my show when I had you imagine your clothing had dissolved. This time you really will be naked, of course, but your conscious mind will believe that it’s a hypnotic illusion, and that you are actually still completely dressed. No amount of evidence will be able to convince your conscious mind that you are truly naked.”

I counted her up and watched while her eyes fluttered open. “What the ...” Claire sat up slowly and looked around. “Where did the elevator go?”

“Would you like a drink?” I asked, channeling her thoughts in a different direction to encourage amnesia for the trance.

It worked. She blinked twice and then shook her head quickly, as if to clear it. “Just some water.”

“Sure,” I agreed, retrieving a bottle from the mini fridge. “It’d be a shame to risk spilling anything on that dress that might stain.”

Claire looked down at her body and ran a hand over the imaginary fabric. “This is my bar-hopping dress,” she explained. “Draws men like flies to honey.”

“So I see,” I replied, grinning inwardly. “What are you wearing underneath it?”

She grinned wickedly. “Play your cards right, and maybe you’ll find out.”

“I can find out anyway,” I assured her. “Just like this.” I snapped my fingers loudly.

Claire’s eyes went wide for a moment, and then she grinned again. “Nice try, Jack, but I already know this trick. I’m not really naked.”

“You’re not?”

She shook her head slowly, her eyes shining in triumph. “No. It’s just an illusion. You told me under hypnosis that when you snapped your fingers I’d feel as if my clothing dissolved, but it’s really still there. You did that one at your show the other night, remember?”

“Yes, I do,” I agreed. “Would it change your mind if I told you that you were wearing a cream-colored thong under the dress and nothing else?”

The smile faded momentarily then came back strong. “Good recovery, but no. You must have peeked inside my dress while I was zonked out before.”

“I see. And if I were to mention that large freckle you have on the underside of your left breast?”

She cupped the area in question, still watching my face. “I’d assume you remember that detail from the other night, of course.”

I shrugged. “I guess you’ve got me,” I confessed. “Why don’t you go use the bathroom while I figure out where to go from here?”

Claire got up, smoothed out her nonexistent dress, and headed for the bathroom. While she was in there, I laid out her dress and thong on the couch next to where she’d been sitting.

When Claire came back out she headed straight for the end of the couch and sat down. “What’s next, Professor?”

I was impressed. The conscious mind can’t be confused by what it doesn’t see, so to Claire the clothes draped over the couch were simply not there. “So there’s no way I can convince you that you’re sitting there in your birthday suit?”

“Nope,” she answered with certainty. “I know you too well, Jack. Can we get on with the lesson now?”

“Of course. Sleep, Claire.”

Deepening suggestions were hardly necessary for Claire anymore, but I gave her a few anyway while I hung her clothes up in the closet. I also gave her the same lecture I’d given Monica about the use of direct suggestions. Then, on a whim, I picked her up in my arms and moved to the bedroom, where I laid her out on the bed.

“You already know that indirect suggestions can be very powerful, Claire, because you’ve experienced it yourself already. Indirect suggestions bypass the conscious mind by using framing structures to embed a command inside of an innocuous comment. For example, you may not have noticed yet that I am tying your hands and feet to the bed now.” As I talked, I placed her hands and feet in spread eagle positions and pressed them down firmly. “Can you really enjoy the sensations in your wrists and ankles of being firmly tied and unable to move? If you try to move them, you’ll find that that the more you try to move them, the more firmly they will be tied down. If you wish, you can try to move your hands and feet now.” Claire’s arms and legs twitched weakly. “That’s right. You can stop trying now, and accept that your hands and feet are securely tied down until I tell you that you are free.”

While Claire’s subconscious digested that, I slipped back into the living room and retrieved the video tape from the elevator. Uninhibited was kind enough to provide a VCR not only in the living area, but also in the bedroom, doubtless for the convenience of VIP guests. I slid the tape into the bedroom VCR, turned on the television, and queued the tape to the point where Claire and I were just entering the elevator.

“In a few moments, Claire, I’m going to count to three. On the count of three, it’s okay to open your eyes and awaken completely, no longer hypnotized, but still obeying all of my suggestions. Your conscious mind will remember only that you have been hypnotized and are learning about indirect and posthypnotic suggestions. You will realize that you are totally naked and have been since shortly after entering the suite. You will also realize that you are now tied to my bed, and that realization will be very sexually arousing to you.

“Once you are awake, I’m going to show you a video that may remind you of an intense sexual experience that took place recently. You’ll want to watch the video very closely, because you’ll find it extremely interesting. As you watch the video and realize who the people in it are, you may find that you can feel all over again the same physical sensations that you felt during the experience itself. You may even feel those sensations much more intensely, even to the point of having a powerful orgasm when the woman in the video orgasms. And you can, Claire, have another, equally powerful orgasm each time I say the words ‘Please come again’ to you. For the rest of the week, whenever we are together and I say the words ‘Please come again’ to you, it’s okay to let yourself relax and experience an intense, extremely satisfying orgasm without worrying about what anyone else might hear or think.”

Holding the remote in my hand, I pulled up a chair next to the bed so that I could watch Claire and the video easily. “One ... two ... three. Eyes open, wide awake.”

Her eyes opened and immediately registered surprise. “Comfortable?” I asked, mostly as a distraction.

She looked over at me, and I could see the realization sinking in. “Oh, my god,” she said, tugging with her arms against the imaginary ropes, “What are you doing?”

In a matter of seconds, as she tugged some more, her nipples swelled up and stood high. I reached over and played with the nearest one. “Somebody’s enjoying this,” I remarked, tweaking the nipple gently and watching her squirm.

“We could be enjoying it a lot more if you weren’t wearing all those clothes,” she suggested.

“Don’t be in such a hurry. Here, let me get you another pillow.” I grabbed a spare pillow from the bedroom closet and propped Claire’s head up a little. “How about a little video to put us in the mood?”

“Looks to me like you’re already in the mood,” she replied, nodding her head toward the obvious bulge in my pants. “Why wait?”

“Oh, I think you’ll like this,” I assured her. “It’s obviously low-budget, but the acting is superb. Watch.”

I touched the Play button on the remote, and the screen came to life. Claire’s eyes opened wide. “That’s us!”

“Yes, it is. This is the security camera tape from last night. The night manager was kind enough to remove it from circulation and give it to me.”

I was going to continue, but Claire wasn’t listening. Instead, she was staring intently at the TV screen, her mouth open in a little circle. As she watched, her eyes and mouth opened wider and wider.

“Some people say that watching yourself on video is extremely arousing,” I said softly, while my hand idly played stroked her thigh. “One might even imagine that you are there now, feeling me peeling your clothes off in a frenzy. It feels good to let your body relive those sensations now, Claire, does it not?”

Claire didn’t answer me—she didn’t have to. Her breathing became labored and gaspy, and I could see the pulse racing in her neck. Her back arched and her arms yanked at the unreal ropes but couldn’t get free. With an upward thrust of her hips, Claire spoke. “Oh, my god!” I looked at the TV and saw her mouthing those same words, with my face buried between her legs.

The word STOP flashed in white at the bottom of the screen, apparently an indicator that I’d hit the Stop switch on the elevator panel. Claire’s moans grew louder and more frequent. A quick brush of my finger along her slit told me there was plenty of moisture down there. “Soon,” I told her, “you’ll feel my rock-hard penis plunging into you from behind. Can you really enjoy the sensation of me entering you, working myself in and out, putting pressure against all of your most sensitive places? It’s okay to let go and enjoy the feeling, Claire.” She groaned and arched her back again, spreading her legs wider and thrusting her hips upward. “Careful,” I said. “Don’t have a thundering orgasm too quickly because you’re going to have several orgasms before this evening is through, and you’ll want to enjoy each one completely.”

The embedded commands in my words pushed Claire along the way. She started babbling incoherently, her eyes locked on the image of us humping away in the elevator, her hips thrusting against the imaginary cock inside her.

“And you know,” I continued, timing my words carefully to the image on the screen, “that that first orgasm, that first tremendous orgasm, is building ... building ... coming NOW!“

Claire on the screen and Claire on the bed threw their heads back and cried out together. “Ah! ... Yes! ... Yes! ... AAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!! ... UUNNNNNNNHHHHHH!!”

I let her ride it out until the vocalizations slowed to a mumble, then turned off the tape and sat down on the edge of he bed facing her. One hand idly stroked the smooth, flat skin of her belly while I continued my lecture. “As you can see, indirect suggestions can be extremely powerful, even when the person is not in hypnosis at the time. By using vocal structures such as ‘It’s okay to ...’ and ‘One might even ...’ and ‘Can you really enjoy ...’ one can send a message directly to the subconscious, bypassing the conscious mind. Maybe you’ll remember this lesson vividly when it comes time for you to construct suggestions of your own.”

Claire nodded hard, her body still recovering from the extended orgasm.

“That’s right. Another kind of suggestions is the posthypnotic suggestion. You already know that a posthypnotic suggestion is one given to a person in hypnosis that is intended to affect them after they are awake. People often think of posthypnotic suggestions in terms of triggers: a certain word, or phrase, or event that triggers the suggestion and causes the person to behave in a certain way. For example, you know that if I say a certain phrase you will go back into hypnosis right away. What you may not remember consciously, although your subconscious certainly does remember, is that I gave you another trigger this evening that has quite a different effect.”

Her face turned to mine, her eyes beginning to focus again. “What trigger?” she panted.

I smiled. “Please come again.”

That look of total surprise came over her again. Claire threw her head back and cried out again. “Oh ... shit ... I can’t ... believe ... ooooooooooohhhhHHHHHHHH!!!!”

I paced her with my hand, stroking her in time to her gasping breaths. “It feels so good, doesn’t it, Claire, to lie there, helpless, having orgasm after orgasm?”

Almost recovered, she stretched herself sensuously under my hand. “Why don’t you untie me and let me show you?”

“It wouldn’t be the same, really,” I said to her. “After all, a man needs a certain amount of recovery time after he has an orgasm. But you can come again and again, can’t you? Please come again, Claire.”

This time there was less surprise on Claire’s face as another rocking climax took her. Tiny beads of sweat formed all over her body, enough that I could trace shapes in it with my fingertip. The pulse in her neck was racing and still her muscles fought against the nonexistent ropes.

“This morning,” I continued, “while you were in hypnosis, I asked you to fill out three index cards. On the first card, I asked you to write three things you are positive you would do under hypnosis if asked. You wrote down three things you’d already done. On the second card, I asked for three things you aren’t sure whether you’d do or not. Your subconscious mind can allow you to remember what you wrote on that card ... now.”

Claire blinked twice and looked at me in wonder. “Orgasm on command,” she recited. “Strip in public. Be tied up for sex.”

“Exactly,” I said, grinning. “As the song goes, two out of three ain’t bad.”

“But you cheated,” she complained, pulling on her arms. “You put me to sleep and just tied me up without asking.”

“Did I? Take a look at your right wrist, Claire. Do you see any ropes there?”

She turned her head and looked. “Yes. Plain white rope, wrapped around my wrist.”

Interesting, I thought. Another supporting hallucination. “And to what is that rope tied, other than your wrist?”

She craned her neck to see. “I can’t tell,” she admitted, “but it feels like something very solid.”

“You think so?” Slowly, deliberately, I slid my hand under her arm at the elbow and moved it away from her, toward the hand. Claire gasped as she watched my hand slide all the way past her wrist and hand despite the ropes she saw. “You see rope because your subconscious was told that you’ve been tied to the bed, just as you thought you were still wearing your clothes earlier when, in fact, I’d already taken them off of you. You felt and saw the clothes on your body then, just as you can see and feel the ropes on your wrists and ankles now.”

I watched the look on her face as the realization sank in. “Your subconscious is very creative and powerful,” I told her. “Thus endeth the lesson. You’re free, Claire.”

Just like that, Claire lifted her arms and held her hands in front of her face, staring at the unmarked wrists. Her legs shifted and closed together, her feet wiggling to celebrate their freedom. Then fire lit up her eyes and she glared at me hungrily. “You are so going to get it!”

My laugh died in my throat as Claire grabbed me by the shirt and yanked me across her body onto the bed. In no time at all she had my pants and boxers off and one hand pumping my already throbbing cock. I opened my mouth to speak, only to have her other hand clamp down tightly over it. “Uh-uh,” she told me. “Not a word out of you until I see those eyes of yours rolling backward.”

Given my prolonged state of arousal, it didn’t take very long before my hips started gyrating on their own and I felt myself passing the point of no return. I grunted under Claire’s hand and let my eyes roll up in my head.

“Gotcha!” she cried out in triumph. Her hand came away from my tingling cock and she plunged herself down on top of me in one smooth, fast motion. The sudden warmth and strength of her muscles around me overloaded my system— I came like a fire hose, growling into her hand like a wild thing while every muscle in my body stiffened in celebration of a long-awaited release. Claire mimicked me, stroking the hairs on my chest in time to my labored breathing. Only after the waves had subsided did she finally pull her hand away from my mouth. “There,” she said with a heavy sigh. “Now what have you got to say for yourself, Professor?”

I mustered the energy for one more evil grin. “Please come again.”