The Creep
Chapter Eight
“I am Martin Manning’s good girl.”
A strong beginning. If there were no more to it, and their experiment went not one iota further, he would call it a rousing success simply to hear her say those words. They weren’t mere words, after all, because
“A good girl is hot, slutty, and obedient.”
These words had been rattling around her subconscious for more than a month now. What would that be like, to have ideas antithetical to one’s conscious thoughts imposed on oneself in that way? Martin tried to imagine it. What if suddenly his favorite color became… orange, or something? What would it feel like betraying a decade and a half of enthusiastic (if often non-practicing) heterosexuality? To crave pickles? The hotness, at least, was surely no stranger to her mindset. Slutty, perhaps not, though now that the floodgates of her libido had opened, he was still trying to accept that Stacey Reeves seemed to carry around more lust in her loins than he had as a fifteen-year-old. Obedient? That would be a hard sell, except
“I like masturbating in front of Martin Manning. I like when Martin Manning touches me while I masturbate. In private he can touch me anywhere. I like cuddling with Martin Manning. Being naked with Martin Manning is exciting. Martin Manning can touch my breasts. Martin Manning can touch my ass. Martin Manning can touch my pussy.”
It had only been back around mid-terms when he’d been shocked to see her come to his apartment in a bikini. Tonight, prompted by a simple text request, she’d arrived in the sequined thong he’d spotted in her closet Monday and four pieces of electrical tape slapped in two X’s over her nipples. Then he’d idly asked if her nipples were hard beneath them and she’d peeled them off. They were. Then he’d sucked on them until they were fit to chisel marble. Adhesive residue or no, slurping on those tits was divine, a marvelous side effect of
“I enjoy kissing Martin Manning. Martin Manning can put his mouth on me. Martin Manning can lick me. Being licked helps me come.”
She was the one who’d first kissed him, in fact, but like so much of it, once she’d done it a first time, there was little stopping her. She’d only once kissed him out of trance. They’d been watching porn after a recent session, her seated on his lap with one hand resting on her thigh and the other rubbing her ass, teasing down the crack, around the back door, creeping towards her slit. As the step-daughter eagerly jacked her step-dad off onto her extended tongue, she hit her limit and sucked on his tongue the whole time she rode out the aftershocks. She liked to kiss while she came, she said, something he had tested further in their only subsequent session since. Their sessions now consisted almost entirely of him sneaking in hypnotic conditioning while the two of them pleasured her. Her, and
“It’s OK for Martin Manning to be naked around me. I like it when Martin Manning’s cock is hard around me because it means he’s enjoying it. It’s important to me that Martin Manning enjoys our time together. It’s OK if Martin Manning masturbates in front of me. It’s only fair. I can accept his cock touching me.”
That term, “accept,” had been the most contentious portion of the session by far. With only days to get her to want it inside her, there could be no settling for “endure,” or “tolerate,” or “abstain from throwing up” (as she was more willing to permit). The closer she came to that next orgasm she was forever chasing, however, the more she chose to accept it. Of course, there was still quite a leap between a bit of dry humping and actual sex. Which was why
“I will use my dildo whenever I get horny. A dildo is shaped like a cock. Something shaped like a cock feels good inside me.”
A trip to the Lover’s Lane store near campus with Naomi had resulted in that find. Her idea, actually, as she grilled him about how he thought he’d get a lesbian cunt acclimated to man-cock. (Her words.) The saleswoman had recommended it as a “starter toy,” a modest royal blue number, smooth plastic down to the base, where the batteries and vibration toggle were housed. His girlfriend gave his cock a thorough caress and assured him she was way beyond starters. He’d hemmed and hawed and insisted that he never expected to get anywhere near the point of using it, but the prospect of simply shoving it down the Wilde child’s throat while she resisted him was fine with his girlfriend, too. Even in a trance, Stacey hadn’t been willing to let him use it on her, but once she conceded that it cost her nothing, compromised by using it on herself.
There was no mess, nothing to suggest a ruptured virginal hymen. This didn’t really mean anything—she might have used one before, or had a girlfriend break her in with fingers or a strapon, or any number of common and mundane reasons that were less sexy to imagine. It was one more empty clue that did nothing to fill in the mystery of this woman. It was a hell of a show, though. Stacey took to her new toy like a newborn tortoise to the sea.
Only after he permitted Stacey to climax, squeaking out a muted cry of bliss as she came all over the chapel bench, did he solicit the admissions necessary for the mantra. In a trance, Stacey was less concerned with the phallic shape of her source of pleasure and more with the pleasure itself. It may or may not wind up being enough to get her craving his shaft in time, but Naomi’s suggestion had been solid. Impish tendency to meddle aside, it really was a marvel how supportive she was about this whole thing.
Time was a factor. Finally, they’d had a talk about the deadline. Saturday, the day after finals. For once, she’d even been willing to indulge questions about her mad scheme, sort of. Looking at him like he was an idiot, she explained that she was headed home for the summer once the semester was over. Stacey had been given to understand, and he confirmed, that three months without reinforcement would piss away most or all of their progress, and she didn’t have any desire to make being hypnotized into fucking him a two-year part-time job. Simple as that. So he had only this final, closing window in order to
“I will repeat these words whenever I am awake, alone, and not studying. I will not get bored of repeating these words. I am Martin Manning’s good girl.”
“Wait, Saturday? Like, a week from yesterday Saturday?”
“Ayep. There’s even going to be another one seven days after that, I read.”
Naomi dipped a finger into her beer and flicked the clinging liquid at his face. “Don’t be a dick. But seriously, that’s it? That seems so soon! And she waited until the week before to tell you?”
The couple sitting at the next table over was in the bathroom, so he took the liberty of swiping their napkins and wiped off the splash. “I always knew it was end of the semester. I didn’t know if that meant the close of dead week or the end of her last final or what, but I told you it was gonna be around now. Now we just have a hard date is all.”
“She’s jerking you around again, babe! I thought she was supposed to be at your beck and call by now?”
“Yeah, me too. I don’t know what to tell you, babe. I think we just stumbled across a couple kinks, the cosplay thing and all. We’re coming down to the wire, and I really don’t see it happening.”
“But on the Zoom in her room…!”
Martin grimaced. To her, it seemed as if he were grimacing with regret at an impending failure. In reality, it was at the heaps of poorly crafted lies he had fed his girlfriend. If she knew a tenth of what he and Stacey had been doing in their recent sessions, that waitress would be mopping up what was left of him. As far as she knew, Stacey let him do his induction, chanted, and dressed up hot for him. Her suggestion of the maid outfit was to her understanding the raciest thing which had thus far transpired between them. She was quite proud of it, actually.
During their rare morning session earlier in the day, he’d personally removed every stitch of Stacey’s clothing, put her under, and fingered her to orgasm while he jerked off beside her. (It had taken some coordination.)
All he wanted was to stall her for another six days. Then Stacey would be gone, the experiment would be over, and this weird wrinkle in their relationship would smooth itself out. “I know. I haven’t been able to make that happen again since. I… You know, I didn’t want to say anything because I know you have your hopes really high about this…”
Naomi slurped a beer foam mustache off her upper lip, frowning. Too much time around Stacey sometimes made him forget how adorable she could be. “What?”
“Between you and me, I’m starting to wonder if I ever really hypnotized her at all.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“Like, what if she was faking this whole time?”
The Sunday before finals, they practically had the bar to themselves. There was only one waitress working, an incongruously chipper woman around her age who bounced between the handful of occupied tables chatting with egregious friendliness. Naomi made hard eye contact as she approached; the woman stopped in her tracks and made for a different group.
“Faking? You think she would fake spending hours and hours and hours pretending to be hypnotized…?”
“You did.”
“But I told you I was. That was the deal. You paid me. Why would she? For what, a practical joke?”
“I don’t think I was ever on her radar for something like that. But who knows? Maybe she saw us doing a show somewhere once and thought it’d be funny to do a little bullying. Or heck, you never know if I flunked one of her sorority sisters and it’s… I dunno. That’s far-fetched. Or maybe it started with something like that, to lull me into thinking I was doing it so she could embarrass me somehow, but she changed it up?”
“No way, beeb. That’d be the most elaborate prank in history. And what’s the punchline? She shows up at your pad next Sunday and goes, ‘baha, jokes on you, I was only pretending to beg you to get me off, chump!’”
A fair point. “Yeah, that’s a fair point. Maybe it’s an exhibitionism thing, like she gets to dress up and act slutty but pass it off as a hypnotic suggestion. A girl like her, popular, well-off, connected… it’s probably hard for her to let that part of her get any stage time. And maybe that’s what was with all the security! The cameras, the gun—”
She sprayed beer across the table. “Gun?! What gun?!”
He waved it off, wiped it off. “Long time ago. Yeah, that makes sense! So she could let her freak flag fly, but have me too scared to take advantage. Then I built up trust, she let her guard down, and we got that whole wild French maid show!”
Naomi shook her head disbelievingly—but at Stacey, not Martin. “I cannot believe that bitch! We can’t let her get away with this. Wasting your time, screwing around with you like that—and flirting that hard with another woman’s boyfriend?! She has to go down!”
He shook his head. Too far. Why couldn’t she just not be interested in this? All that time as his assistant she’d shown not the least bit of interest in hypnotism, and now it was all she could talk about. “Let’s not jump to conclusions. We don’t know she’s faking. Let’s give it the week, see what comes of it, and then we’ll have all summer to decide if or how to pay her back, yeah?”
She scowled. Impatience was one of her vices. Before they were dating, she’d arrived late to a show one time, explaining afterwards that she’d been pulled over by some jerk cop because she didn’t slow down for a blinking red. Good old-fashioned busty blonde hotness had gotten her out of a ticket, but she’d still been indignant even after he explained that blinking red meant stop.
“Yeah, maybe. But you better keep trying, yeah? I’d rather see her on her knees sucking your dick than on her back after I punch her stupid hot face in.”
He smiled. “Same, babe. And not just ’cause of the obvious reason.”
She rolled her eyes and finger-splashed him again, and asked about if he felt ready for his exams. There, he didn’t need to lie.
One more week, he thought.
One more week, she thought.
“That thing pokes my ass any harder and it’s going to start stabbing through your boxers. He’s trying to make wanting to fuck you into the actual thing, the little cheater.” Stacey laughed and squirmed so his erection was poking into her leg, not her pussy.
He turned down the volume on his tablet so they could talk over the porn star on the screen repeating the off-screen voice’s brainwashing that she was a mindless cum slut. “Can’t blame him for trying, hot piece of ass like that falling onto his lap.”
“Uh, I can blame him, and I do. No sex. You know the rule.”
Rule, singular, where once had been an array of them, both spoken and unspoken. No ogling; no coming within arm’s reach while she’s under; no recording her; no disrespectful comments; no telling her what to wear or what not to wear; no touching; no making out with her while she was naked on his lap as they watched hypno-porn when she ought to be home studying for her C322 exam the next day, her last one for the year.
There was one rule now: no fucking. The one thing he hadn’t yet been able to make her want.
“Yikes, your stubble really feels shitty on my tits. You gotta shave that shit if you wanna suck on them,” she griped in response to the indicated stimulus.
Two rules. No fucking, and he gotta shave that shit if he wanna suck on her tits.
That was about the way of it. Stacey was a pragmatic woman, he’d finally accepted. She didn’t waste time pretending she didn’t enjoy things she obviously enjoyed. Her conscious mind didn’t relish them the way her subconscious did, but that was to be expected. Pretty much everybody had stuff they would get off to if their subconscious were at the helm. The difference between pretty much everybody and Stacey Reeves, however, was that she didn’t ignore her subconscious once it surfaced.
There was no sulking over her transformation. She was a flesh and blood woman with a sex drive that suggested she might be the love child of Blanche Devereaux and Leisure Suit Larry. There was no point to pretending she didn’t want a guy to suck on her tits when he’d just seen her pant and moan and clutch his face to them while she played with herself. Plus the honesty he’d hammered into her brain with those early mantras probably helped force her to own it, a happy coincidence of his original intent.
The woman on the screen seemed well and truly convinced that she was a weak, easy, obedient sex slave and she loved to suck her master’s cock, and so the sex scene began. It was one of the rifts in their porn preferences; the induction and setup were his bread and butter, but Stacey simply liked to watch people fuck. She preferred the lesbian videos, and they accounted for a good three quarters of her own selections, but she didn’t let a triviality like a nine-inch dick in a porn star’s vagina put her off her appetite.
Martin gently scooted her off her lap and asked her to lie down. “Aw man, we can’t even finish first?”
“No we can finish. Just lie down, OK?”
Stacey complied. She was his good girl, after all. “I told you, it’s weird when you stand over me and watch me masturbate. If you wanna see me play, at least sit down or something. It’s like the mansplaining equivalent of voyeurism.”
Martin acquiesced, kneeling down beside her. She tried to hold the tablet where he could see it, but he shook his head. “I got the best porn I could want right here, babe.”
The two each frowned at his slip in concert. “Please don’t call me babe. Gross.” Best porn was apparently fine, but terms of endearment? Bah. For Martin’s part, he felt guiltier over that word than anything else they were doing. Their whole relationship was about sex. Affection wasn’t any part of it.
He mumbled an apology and started playing with her inner thighs. She always liked that. If Naomi knew about how much better Stacey had conditioned him to be at foreplay, she’d be writing the woman a thank you card. Stacey’s free hand migrated down between her legs, where he was treated to the increasingly familiar sight of her spread out on his sofa playing with herself as casually as if she were alone in her own home.
He gave her a few minutes, long enough that she was taking her usual clit break and slipping a couple fingers in, and took hold of her hand.
“What are you doing?” she said, half-sitting up suddenly.
At a pressure from his grip, her hand resumed slipping in and out of herself. Shlick, shlick, shlick. “Nothing you weren’t doing already.”
Her nose wrinkled, but when he did no more than guide her own masturbation, she let it slide. The tablet speaker sounded a gasp for air, and the breathy words of the actress, “I am a weak, easy, obedient sex slave, and I love to suck my master’s cock.” Gurgly noises resumed, and Stacey relaxed.
As the on-screen blowjob dragged on, eventually Martin pulled her middle finger to her palm, and replaced it with his index finger. Their digits thrust in and out of her hot wet sex in unison. By the time the actress had moved on from blowjobs to the main course—“I am a walking cum receptacle, and I love it when my master comes in my cunt”—he’d taken over entirely. She put her slimy hand to pawing at her breasts as he penetrated her.
Then he got out the vibrator.
He wasn’t subtle about it or anything. It had been stored under the couch until this moment to conceal it from Naomi. After their first stop early last week, he’d made a return trip to the dildo emporium, this time selecting one according to thorough market research and lengthy biometric analysis. She laughed delightedly when the tip of the buzzing black phallus made gentle contact with her clit.
“You’re going to spoil me, Mesmer. My—” She caught herself short of the word, but the tone told him where that had been headed. Just say “my girlfriend” already! Say Sherri’s fucking name, he thought. “Do I get to keep this one, too? I’m gonna get a reputation.”
“As my good girl?”
The delight in her voice died and became a breathy whimper of lust. If what she’d told him was true, and he believed her, she’d been saying her newest mantra as a study break, a half hour for every hour studying, plus an hour when she first woke up and another before she came over for the night’s session. He’d done the math on her way to his house that evening. That meant she’d said those words to herself easily two hundred times that day, probably more—and it had been her busiest day of finals week. This final mantra had been added to over the past few days, but he had no doubt the foundational portions of it had been repeated literally thousands of times by then.
The speed with which his mind raced through calculations would have made Martin’s stats professor proud.
(Original mantra—additions) × (Saturday + Sunday as almost uninterrupted study)—(time spent on their sessions) x (the preposterous amount of repetitions he had demanded of her) = (holy shit, that has to be over 1000.0 utterances of “I am Martin Manning’s good girl”)
He slid the vibrator inside her. Her legs spread even wider, which he took as an invite. There she was, wet and glistening and all too willing. He leaned down and extended his tongue. “That stubble... seriously…”
She made it no further. As his tongue made contact with Stacey’s clit, grievances faded out of her along with any thought of impropriety or resistance. He’d tasted it before—had been commanded to taste it before—but this was the first time conscious. She’d said the words so many times now: Martin Manning can lick me. Being licked helps me come. Her pussy had been ready for the possibility. Craved it. He decided immediately that conscious cunt tasted even better than the subconscious. The subconscious had been delectable.
He offered his free hand toward her mouth as he felt her first orgasm approach, and she sucked his fingers, still slick with her juices, into her mouth hungrily, licking them clean as the pleasure rippled through her naked body.
The buzzing ebbing and flowing from her pussy came to a sudden halt. “Oh frick, did the battery die? I have the other one in my purse, if you—”
“It’s fine. That was me.”
“Yeah?” She was more interested in her nerve endings than his reasons, but it had felt better vibrating and the woman wanted at least some explanation. She didn’t receive it. He simply licked, and pumped, and she soon forgot there had ever been anything else, slender hips writhing in time with his play.
Then he stopped licking.
“Wore out your tongue, huh?” she asked, grinning at him over the peaks of her tits. “I get that sometimes. Maybe one of these years I’ll hypnotize you to be a lesbian and we can get your tongue trained up to snuff.”
“I could keep going.” As carefully as he could, he crawled down the length of the sofa. When he was at the limit of where he could continue to comfortably operate the dildo, he resumed doing so, bending down to suck on her nipples one by one.
“Mmmm, might not take a whole year with you,” she half-moaned, half-whispered.
His kisses glided up her body, not quite letting her suck his tongue into her mouth (remembering how she liked to be kissed while she came, and vice versa). He proceeded until his lips met an ear. Her earlobes had always been sensitive. When Martin had learned how sensitive, he wished he’d found out sooner. Their video was long over, the tablet discarded and wedged between her hip and the couch cushions, gradually sinking in.
Her body began to tremble. Her skin flushed. Her jaw opened wider, breath sucked in harder. It was coming.
Right into her ear, the hypnotist whispered, “This new dildo is special, Stacey. My good, good girl. Do you want to know why?” When she didn’t answer, he stopped working it. Stacey Reeves was a woman whose body was well-trained to halt on the precipice of release; if he kept going, she would come.
“Wh-why?” she panted.
“It’s the same size and shape as my cock. The same length, same girth, everything.”
“Oh god…”
He resumed, and her body picked up only seconds behind where it had left off. “So what you’re feeling right now? It’s exactly what you’d be feeling if you decided to have sex with me. If you like this, if you come from this, that’s your body telling you it wants to fuck me. Do you understand, Stacey?”
“You… you’re such a fucking… fucker… fuck…” Her head lolled listlessly, but he brought her ear back to him and held it in place.
“I’ve sucked your tits. I’ve licked your ass. I’ve tweaked your nipples and French kissed you and touched every inch of your skin and I’ve eaten out your pussy. I’ve gotten you off almost every way there is.”
“One more… don’t stop…”
“And now, I’m making you come by fucking you with a cock that is in every way like my cock. And you love it like you loved all those other times. And there’s no hypnosis to hide behind any more. There’s just me. My cock. My pussy.” He gave it a little twist. “And my good girl.”
“SONOFABITCH!” she shrieked as her orgasm overwhelmed her. It only sounded somewhat angry. Objectively, Martin could see it was not the hardest she’d ever come. That would have been a nice touch, but second orgasms were hardly ever as potent as the first, and it may well be that Stacey simply got off better from other activities. Nevertheless, it was far from the weakest he’d seen, and that fact included that her conscious orgasms seldom rivaled her tranced ones.
Stacey pulled his mouth to hers as he kept working his doppelcock, fingers seizing his hair almost painfully and preventing him from getting away. Stacey kissed him until he wondered how she could even breathe, but then he remembered noses, and that he had one, and then they could keep kissing as long as they wanted.
Some minutes later, the two of them sat on either end of the sofa from one another. Stacey was still naked, knees curled up to her chest still coated in a sheen of sweat, though Martin still wore his boxers over an erection he wasn’t sure would ever go away. Naomi was out with friends that night, giving him the evening to do some last-minute TA stuff and prep for his own exams. He might have to stop over at her place and surprise her. A hard-on like this couldn’t be tamed by mere masturbation.
“You really planned that out, huh. The whole sleeper dildo waiting under the couch for the right moment and everything. How did you even know I’d let you use it?”
Martin scoffed. “For one, you’ve got to be the horniest person I’ve ever met in my life. And for two, I guess I didn’t know. But if you wouldn’t, then that probably would have been the answer to your experiment.”
“Well it was good. Smart. You know, your girlfriend might be one of the lucky ones, Mesmer. You might not be the hottest dude on the block, but you’ve got a fucking tongue on you.”
“Thanks…?” He didn’t ask whether she meant his rhetorical skills as a hypnotist or the way his tongue licked her bean.
“Pff. Greets me at the door telling me my titties look fuckable—I don’t say boo. But remind him he’s not… shit, who do straight girls like? Who’s that guy from Cobra Kai? The blonde guy’s kid?”
“I know who you mean.”
“Yeah, him. Anyway, you’re not him, and it’s fine. You just made a DAT girl come like a cannonball and you want to get pouty? Get outta here with that weak sauce.”
He chuckled. “I guess I did, huh.”
“C’mon, you still look sad. You did good tonight. I’m… I still need to think about what this means for the experiment, but you did better than anybody could. You should feel proud.”
“No, I do. I mean I am. Really. I’m good.”
She twisted her head, leaning in with concern. “Talk at me, Mesmer. Is this because you cheated on your girlfriend? Naomi, right?”
“I didn’t cheat on her,” he declared adamantly. Just because he’d lied to her about having another woman over, one his girlfriend was incredibly jealous of, and then watched porn with her and fingered her and ate her out and made her come on a dildo proportioned to his cock while he whispered all sexy-like in her ear… it wasn’t technically cheating.
“OK, then what?”
“No, it’s just… that was really, really hot back there. I know you know you’re hot, but I don’t know if you appreciate the effect a scene like that can have on a guy.”
“Aw, aren’t you a sweet—” Her banal deflection stopped as she caught his meaning. “Oh right…! You didn’t… yeah. You didn’t. Oh.”
“Hey, for what it’s worth, you almost got me there without even touching it.”
“It can do that? God, how do you live with those fricking things.” Her lips pursed. “You know, if you wanna… you know, whip it out, take care of business… It’s only fair. I can, you know, let you look, if it helps.”
“Yeah, because staring at someone while you beat off isn’t creepy or anything.”
“When did that ever stop you? What—I’m kidding, sheesh. Go on, I’ll do something cute. Strike a pose or something. C’mon, you want frontsies or backsies?”
“It’s OK, Stacey. It’s enough to know you’d let me if I wanted to. Remember yesterday?”
Yesterday, they had watched porn side by side and played with themselves. Nothing touched but their legs from the knee down, but still, neither had found the other’s presence the least bit disruptive to their pursuits.
“Oh yeah, right.”
“So… yeah. I’ll take care of it after you head out.”
“Oh. Sure.” Her frown deepened as the awkwardness intensified. “You know, I could…” She made a frightfully vigorous jacking off motion. “If you want. Not like you haven’t done as much for me.”
“It’s not transactional, Stacey. I wasn’t collecting favors or anything. Really. I’ll be fine.”
She whined. “I feel like it’s my fault.”
“Of course it’s your fault. Are you kidding me? Look how insanely hot you are. That said, guys who guilt girls into doing sexual favors for them because of bullshit like blue balls can suck a dick.”
“You’re not guilting me—or I mean, I feel guilty, but only because you were so good to me and now you’re… you know, high and dry.”
“If you wanna get it wet, you’re welcome to.” It didn’t feel good, the effort involved to make certain the comment came across as jest, but he made it nonetheless.
For once, she was fidgeting while fully in control of herself. “I… I mean, shit, I guess I could… you know. Suck it. Or whatever.”
Martin arched a brow across the couch. “You don’t mean that.”
“No, I… Look, whatever. Girls give blowjobs sometimes. If I’m gonna think about being selectively hetero, maybe that’s what I need is to take the whole ride.”
“You… you probably shouldn’t…”
Stacey slid down off the couch and walked over to him on her knees. He could only watch and arch his hips as she gingerly took hold of his boxers and lowered them to his ankles. Martin’s cock emerged, an angry tower of red masculinity. Stacey stared at it contemplatively. He could see her weighing the decision, grappling with her desires and her conscience and her future, all in one bite-sized morsel.
At last, resolve was mustered. Eyes on her prize, Stacey’s tongue slipped forth, mouth opened wide as she leaned forward to engulf him. He could already imagine how her tongue would feel once she closed the distance. Six inches. Four. So pink. Two. One. Glistening. Half.
Teeth gritted, Martin stopped her. A gentle pressure on her forehead that triggered a look of commingled aggravation, offense, and relief. Her tongue snaked forward to close the distance, but he sat up and held her at literal arm’s length.
“What? What’s your problem?” she snapped. She batted his hand away and made a less delicate lunge, but this time he stopped her with a hand cupped over his shaft.
“I appreciate the gesture. I just… this isn’t what we worked towards. You came to me to make me make you want to fuck me. Believe me, amazing as the thought is, I’m not going to piss away whatever shot we have at making it by yoloing into some last minute exposure therapy.”
Her eyes narrowed with every word he sputtered. Head shaking, she replied with open incredulity. “You’re really not going to let me—me—suck your cock, because you’re worried it might stop me from wanting to, but not actually, fuck you.”
He sighed. “You’re right, I changed my mind.” His hips slid back towards her face, and she fell back squealing with alarm and laughter. He teased her with some mild advances but let her fend him off.
“You are something else, Mesmer,” she said once she was again dressed—in the next-to-nothing he’d let her wear that night—and seated.
“I’m something, all right. But hey, we’re near our time, and you have that final, so… priorities, right?”
She glanced at the time glowing on his microwave. “Yeah, priorities. My sister said this exam is brutal.”
“What? How would Kira…”
“Don’t talk about my fucking sister!” she snapped with more intensity than Martin could imagine ever summoning in defense of a sibling, particularly an absent one, particularly in response to no threat at all. “Sorry. My sorority sister, jackass. Sorry. I didn’t mean to snap.”
“No, it’s all right. Family. My bad—hasn’t come up in a while.”
She let out a slow breath. “It’s OK. Really. It’s just a sensitive subject.” She forced a thin smile. “She’d probably like you, actually. I mean, if you weren’t the exact age distance to a high school senior to officially be a creepy old man.”
“Fair. Though… why would she like me then, exactly…?” He asked delicately, and was relieved when his probing didn’t trigger a relapse.
“No, she’s… She’s got this hypnotherapist she sees. Hates it. Absolutely fucking hates it. But Dr. Rivers got Mom to quit smoking and drop like thirty pounds, so she makes her go.”
The vacation photo on that corkboard in Stacey’s bedroom depicting her mother and both daughters smiling on some boat somewhere had stuck in his mind. (Catching a snippet of Stacey’s Mom during a commercial a few days after had cemented it.) She was a mighty fine looking woman, filled out her swimsuit nearly as well as her daughters. Dr. Rivers did good work, it seemed.
“So she hates creepy old guys, hates hypnotists… you’re right, we’d be besties.” His curiosity was burning him alive over what sent his sister into hypnotherapy, but he wasn’t stupid enough to ask a question that could be that personal on a subject about which Stacey was that touchy.
“Just… whatever. It doesn’t matter.”
“OK, sure.” When the far-off look in her eyes didn’t fade after a moment, he went on. “I know there are areas I’m not allowed to ask questions about, and if this is one of them tell me to shut up, but… did you ever go into hypnotherapy? Before me, I mean. If you can call this that.”
After a long moment, her eyes darted back up to his. (How could it be that a naked Stacey Reeves was casually sitting on his living room floor, perfectly content to let him leer, and he was watching for her eyes?) “Me? Nah. Never really needed it, and my dad probably wouldn’t have let me anyway. I’m a daddy’s girl, and Kira’s my mom’s. I think he always… maybe not consciously, but deep down… worried Dr. Rivers was doing something weird. Which for the record I totally think he’s wrong—Mom is way too normal to be the recipient of this kind of brainwashing. But he’s a simple guy. Hypnosis may as well be sorcery to my dad. Hell, you’ve been doing it to me for most of the school year and I still barely understand it.”
“It’s more art than science, oftentimes.”
“Sure. Probably more so for the ‘make me wanna fuck you’ patients than the ‘I have panic attacks when I have to go to social events’ types.”
Since she volunteered, he carefully asked, “Did it help? Dr. Rivers, I mean. We’ll find out about your issues tomorrow, I guess.”
“Eh, I think so. Kira doesn’t like to talk about it, and we’re not super close any more anyways. We still talk sometimes, but she’s… I dunno. It’s different.”
“Oh. That, uh, sucks.”
“Yeah. We used to be tight. But… eh, whatever.” There was that look in her eyes again. “Anyway, yeah. My mom and my sister doing it is what made me think of giving it a try, so whether you loved this past year or you hated it, that’s where credit’s due.”
“I’ll get my thank you card slash death threats ready.”
She smiled. “Anyway, I should shut up before I say too much.”
“Right. You’re my patient, not my friend. You don’t pay me to listen to your life story.”
“That’s right, creeper.” Her hands pushed off her knees, and she took to her feet. “I’ll be in touch before I head home for the summer. You at least deserve to know whether… yeah. When I know.”
“Yeah.”
“Probably Saturday—if you’re free? I’m going to lunch with my girlfriend’s parents when they come to pick her up, and then leaving sometime after that, but I’ll talk to you before I go.”
“Sherri?”
She nodded, glancing at him like he was stupid for having to ask. “Yeah, her parents are that kind of douchey rich liberal who fly a rainbow flag in front of their suburban estate but clutch their pearls when it’s their own daughter. Maybe I shouldn’t hate. They’re still trying to be OK with the lesbian thing, and I’m still trying to be OK with the being someone’s girlfriend thing. We all got our issues.”
As someone trying to be someone’s boyfriend, Martin empathized. “Commitment isn’t always easy.”
Stacey quickly dressed, then let him walk her to the door with a hand on her ass. They moved to exchange a wet open-mouth kiss in unison. “Good luck on that exam.”
She patted his aching bulge. “Yeah. You get that girlfriend over here and put her straight mouth to work on that before you pass out from blood deprivation.”
“Will do.”