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chocolates and kissed your fingertips, that was how he could talk. Astaire danced like he could talk. Sinatra sang. Jean’s voice was steamy stolen kisses in the backseat of an old Chevy. It was fantasy phone sex.
“Kerry… are you still with me?”
“I wish,” she murmured. It hardly mattered what the man said—it was all sweet seduction.
“You wish?”
“This must be what puff clouds feel like,” she said, releasing another languid sigh. “A little breeze, and I would be on my way, floating, floating… just floating.”
“What do you wish for, Kerry?”
“I could just float all day… did I mention I felt like a puff cloud?”
“Kerry, stay with me, girl.”
With you? I am so with you, Jean.
“You said something about a wish.”
What did she wish for? So many things…
No, just one. One little thing.
“Care to share?” he asked.
“Well, I wish I could move.” She lifted her arm and it flopped back down. “I’m as limp as linguine. That hypnosis was amazing.”
“It only works with a willing subject.”
She smiled through drooping lids. “I didn’t know I was that willing. This is a little bit of heaven, this weightless sensation. And I’m so warm. I’ve never been so warm.”
“You released some tension, and now you’re glowing. Technically, it’s just blood, rushing to the surface.”
“Glowing, yes, that’s exactly what it feels like.”
When he’d suggested hypnosis, she’d immediately thought of some guy on a stage, making people bark. But the sounds of a babbling brook and chirping birds had overridden her concerns, and the screen was transformed with kaleidoscopic images of slowly swirling pink clouds, sifting sands and dark green oceans.
She found it impossible not to watch.
It was like a peek at infinity.
Her lids were already heavy when Jean’s voice entered the mix and he suggested she rest her head. She was gone before her eyes closed, but it had seemed as if he were right there, whispering strange, yet deliciously soothing things in her ear and putting her in a trance with his warm breath. His voice ebbed and flowed like a drug in her bloodstream, and even though she couldn’t recall exactly what he’d said or what she’d done, she was quite certain she’d followed his suggestions without question. That was what you did when you were hypnotized.
When she came to she was slumped in her chair like a rag doll and sighing out sounds of satisfaction. She was so mellow her sweater socks were down around her ankles and she didn’t even care. But what really fascinated her were the contradictions. Her body felt heavy and light at the same time, relaxed, yet deliciously aroused. Nerve endings twinkled like strings of Christmas lights, but her muscles were as fluid as the music coming from the speakers.
She’d heard about things like full-body orgasms, but she didn’t think they were possible, especially if you had yet to have one of the garden variety type. The one smart thing she’d done with the string of losers in her life was to not sleep with them. She may have been used, but not in that way. Some protective instinct had kept her from surrendering body and soul to these men, despite their bad boy charm—or maybe because of it.
Her first boyfriend in college was the closest thing she’d ever had to a grand passion. She’d loved him and wanted to give herself to him, perhaps too soon and for the wrong reason. She’d hoped it would bring them closer, but her own desperation should have warned her what would happen. Brad Styles repaid her trust by having sex with one of Kerry’s girlfriends the night after he’d taken Kerry’s virginity. It was devastating. Most nineteen-year-old coeds would have been able to put it behind them, but for her it was a life sentence because it validated her belief that no man would ever really love her.
Her father hadn’t. He’d deserted his family when Kerry was a toddler, and her mother’s bitterness had prepared Kerry to expect the