"I, um... what do I need to do?" Crystal asked, half expecting the butterflies in her stomach to make a break for it the second she opened her mouth. "Do I need to call you 'Sir', or 'Master', or, um, get naked for you, or....?" The sentence trailed off into anxious silence, a nervous tic of her Midwestern upbringing that twenty years on the West Coast couldn't quite shake. She felt like she needed to fill the tense, uncomfortable hush in the room, but she had no idea what was supposed to go in the conversational space beyond an expression of bewilderment that she was really here, really in Austin's room right here and right now doing what she was doing.
Austin must have sensed her nervousness, because he took her hand in his and gave it a reassuring squeeze. "You don't need to do anything you don't want to do," he said, imparting a husky, comforting timbre to his voice that sent shivers down Crystal's spine. "That's the point of all this. Everything that's going to happen, everything I'm going to put into your head over the next thirty days... it's all going to feel like it just arrived all on its own. You're not going to think about it, you're not going to make a conscious effort to make it happen--it'll feel as natural and effortless as breathing. Some of it you won't even notice. Your behavior will simply adjust to conform to my desires."
He chuckled. "Always assuming, of course, that you want to go through with it all the way to the end."
Somehow, that little chuckle reassured Crystal more than anything he could possibly have said. Her next door neighbor might have some weird fetishes; he might even have persuaded her to take part in a few things that forty-one year old Midwestern transplants with drooping tits and chunky thighs weren't supposed to be interested in trying out. But at least he didn't take himself too seriously. Crystal smiled, her nervousness abating just a little, and said, "Well, let's take it one day at a time."
"Absolutely," he said, grinning back at her with that same infectious smile that he'd greeted her with three months ago at the pool party where they first met. "And for today, all I need from you is permission to bind your hands and feet, and touch you sexually through your clothes. If you want to be naked, you can, and if you want me to do anything under the clothes, that's fine, but all I really need at this stage is physical contact." Something about his matter-of-fact demeanor sent another icy stab of anxiety through Crystal's gut, but she forced herself to remain calm. She was here of her own free will, after all... on this first day, at least.
A part of her still wondered how much she really believed Austin could do any of the things he was talking about. If he really could... brainwash a woman, the way he said, then surely he'd have a whole harem of sexy twenty-somethings in his apartment? He wouldn't be hitting on a woman almost twice his age with the body to show for it if he really had all these hypnotic talents he claimed to possess.
Not that he ever sounded like he was bragging or anything. Honestly, if she hadn't come over for drinks a couple of weeks ago and noticed the framed certificate on his wall, she might never have known he was a hypnotist at all, much less what he did with his skills. His reluctance to discuss it that night made it pretty clear that he was more than a little bit nervous about what Crystal might think about a guy with an 'ethical brainwashing' fetish, and she had to admit--that feeling was probably justified. Even now, standing here in his bedroom getting ready to undergo her first programming session, she wasn't entirely sure whether she really wanted to go through with it or if she just liked the thought of being desired by a younger man and she was willing to put up with some seriously freaky shit if it meant getting laid.
But that was what she was here for, wasn't it? To find out. "I, um, I think I'll keep my clothes on," she murmured, her voice reedy and weak. "You can flip up my skirt if you need to get to my, um... my girly bits." She blushed hard, glad her light brown skin didn't show her embarrassment quite as much as Austin's ruddy pink features. She felt terminally uncool enough as it was at the moment without looking like the mere discussion of her vagina made her simper like one of the church ladies back home. "And, um, the cuffs are f-fine." She looked at the bed, trying to pretend that she got strapped spread-eagled to mattresses all the time. "Why, uh, why do we need those again?"
Austin smiled. "It's a psychological tactic," he explained, sounding for all the world as if he was going over the instruction manual for a new dishwasher and not describing his plans to turn his neighbor into a full-time live-in sex slave. "If you're helpless physically, then some of that will translate to a degree of mental vulnerability that will make you feel as though you can't resist the programming I'm giving you. It's one of those things that works even when you know it's happening, so I don't mind telling you now. Honestly, you might even be more susceptible to it if you understand what it's doing to you."
