Celia surfaced from trance with a slow, lazy stretch, feeling for all the world like she was waking from the most relaxing sleep she could imagine. She supposed she was, in a way; Isaiah was always telling her that trance was nothing more than focusing her imagination under his direction, so everything was pretty much the most 'whatever' she could imagine. Or at least, that sounded right to her, and she couldn't think too hard about it so soon after coming out of trance.
"How do you feel?" Isaiah asked, looking at her over the top of his glasses, his goateed chin propped on his hands. His arching eyebrows and dark skin emphasized his penetrating stare, and Celia felt like she could get lost in his warm brown eyes all over again. She always felt a little shiver of delight when she looked into his gaze, each moment filled with erotic possibility even if he had no intention of hypnotizing her right that second.
She smiled shyly and blushed, knowing that her tendency to go red combined with her pale skin meant Isaiah could read her every emotion like a book. "Good," she said, still too fuzzy to elaborate much. "I, um...I think I went deeper than usual that time." That was an understatement, but it always took Celia a few minutes to really kick her brain into gear after even a normal trance, let alone a...she focused her slightly glassy stare onto the clock, and was stunned to realize that forty-five minutes had passed while she was drifting along to Isaiah's rich baritone voice. She probably would have pegged it for ten.
She scratched her head in confusion, displacing a few strawberry blonde strands of hair in the process. "I did...I do..." The words seemed to come slowly at first, as if winding their way through an invisible maze. "I feel like I've forgotten some of the trance," she said at last. "Did I lose some time when I was under?" Celia sure as hell hoped so. A lot of her fantasies about hypnosis centered on amnesia-something about the idea of following an instruction she didn't even know was in her head always got her soaking right through her panties every time she daydreamed about it. Which was pretty often, especially since she met Isaiah and found out that in addition to being a skilled, ethical practitioner of hypnotherapy, he was also a kinky poly Dominant who was more than happy to help her explore her fetishes with him.
Or at least try to. "Well, I obviously can't be sure without asking," he said, his lips quirking into a wry smile, "but...what's the last thing you remember?"
Celia thought back, pleasantly astonished at how vague the memories actually seemed. Normally she had almost crystal-clear recollections of her trances...recollections she replayed over and over in her head every night until her next session with Isaiah, she admitted to herself with a sheepish grin. In fact, Isaiah had suggested that may be part of the reason she had such a problem with hypnotic amnesia-if she loved reliving the experience that much, her subconscious mind might have difficulty letting those memories go. But this time...
"I remember repeating the word 'deeper'," Celia said. "Over and over, until I lost track of how many times I said it. And then...there's just feelings. I remember feeling warm, I remember feeling happy, I remember feeling peaceful, but I d...I ca...but everything else, I've forgotten." She had that strange elusive sensation again as she finished speaking, as if there was something her brain kept wandering away from. The more she thought about it, though, the more she wanted to think about something else instead, until...
The thought popped like a soap bubble. Celia smiled, her body growing warm with pleasure even though the cause of it escaped her, and said, "That's good, right? The forgetting? That's like leveling up in my 'Hypnotic Subject' skill." Her smile widened into a grin at their private joke. She sometimes wished her real self came with a character sheet, but for now she could just stick to imagining one.
Isaiah seemed even happier than she did. (And almost as turned on, she thought, noticing the way his slacks tented at the crotch.) He said, "I had a bit of a breakthrough. I figured that if we really wanted to get you forgetting things the way you said you were hoping to, we needed to shift some of the sexy parts from the actual trance to when you were awake. Basically, I'm giving you something to replay in your head that doesn't involve you being sound asleep."
Celia sat up a little, her eyes widening. "Like what?" she asked, suddenly wide awake with excitement. Her mind ran wild with possibilities, years of sexual fantasies unspooling in her head with feverish speed. Isaiah could have told her anything, made her do anything while she was deep in a helpless, obedient trance and she wouldn...she couldn...and it would just slip right out of her mind. She was thinking what he wanted her to think right now. Celia found herself rubbing her legs together at the idea.
"Well, did you forget taking your shirt off, for instance?" Isaiah's facial expression radiated angelic innocence, but Celia thought she saw a gleam of mischief in his eye as he glanced down at her chest. Celia's own stare was dragged down right along with it.
