Dorrie dropped her briefcase the second she walked through the door, but she really wanted to throw it. She knew it contained four procedure change proposals, three performance evaluations, no less than six action items marked 'URGENT', and ironically a letter acknowledging that she'd watched the annual presentation on work/life balance that she had to initial and return to her boss by Monday. Probably three hours of work, maybe as much as three and a half, and by the time she finished she'd be too tired to do much more than numb her brain with a little television before falling asleep. What a fucking day.
And it only got worse when she looked over and noticed Rob coming out of her bedroom, still tucking his shirt back into his slacks. "Just leaving?" she asked, disguising the venom in her voice only with the greatest of difficulty. Doctor Hendricks had become a regular visitor to their household lately, frequently using their office for the teletherapy appointments that had become the majority of his business, and Dorrie wasn't dumb enough not to notice that his change in habits had coincided with her husband Jim's decision to quit his job and become a full-time homemaker. She couldn't complain too hard--Lord knew they needed the help with her own job keeping her so busy--but God did she sometimes want so smack the smug little grin off of Rob's face.
Like now. Like especially now. "Actually," he said, his voice dripping with so much sympathy that Dorrie practically ached to throttle him, "I was sticking around to see you. I can tell the past several months have been hard on you, and I wanted to give you a chance to talk about your feelings. Obviously, I can't take you on as a client, but that doesn't mean I can't offer you some friendly advice if you want to share." He didn't look like he was mocking her. But Dorrie couldn't help but feel a cruelty behind his wide blue eyes. He... he had to know, right? He had to know what this was doing to her.
"I wouldn't want to be your client," she snapped, settling reluctantly into a chair and taking her mind off the ever-present briefcase for a moment. "Not if it meant challenging your sense of professional ethics." Rob had dropped Jim as a client the moment they began their... Dorrie didn't want to call it a relationship, not even in the privacy of her own head, but she knew Rob fucked her husband a hell of a lot more than she did these days. But he hadn't recommended a different hypnotherapist, and Dorrie suspected that Rob was still hypnotizing Jim when she wasn't around. That wasn't the only thing she suspected, but there was a fine line between being uncomfortable with her husband's sudden and enthusiastic embrace of bisexuality and actual paranoia, and Dorrie didn't want to wind up on the wrong side of that line.
Rob smiled--if there was anything forced about it, it was probably just in Dorrie's imagination--and took a seat on the couch next to her. "I'm glad we understand each other," he said, his voice still infuriatingly compassionate. "So let's just have a little friendly chat. It's obvious that you're not getting what you wanted out of opening up your marriage to other men--what kinds of expectations did you have when you asked Jim to explore his sexuality like this?" Dorrie opened her mouth to answer, but the enormity of her feelings stuck in her throat and left her unable to say a single word.
She hadn't asked Jim to 'open up their marriage', or 'explore his sexuality', or any of the other things their arrangement had turned into. Dorrie wanted Jim to have a sexy threesome with another man, maybe doing a few kinky sexy things while she watched, and then she wanted to put the fantasy away for her to masturbate to when Jim wasn't around and go back to the way things were. And yes, she recognized that in hindsight it was selfish of her to expect that nothing would change, and yes, she realized now that it was unfair of her to put so many terms and conditions on her husband's sex life after claiming she was open to trying something new, but... but surely she got to have a say as well, didn't she? Didn't she get to have her needs met, too?
"It's okay, Dorrie," Rob said, holding up his hand. There was a simple ring on his finger, a gold band with a single faceted garnet stone in the center. "I can tell this is a lot for you. Let's try to take it in bite-sized pieces and see where it takes us. Just let your eyes focus on the gem, let it calm you and steady you, and think back to how you felt when you first saw Jim and I together."
Dorrie's jaw tightened. She wasn't incredibly familiar with hypnosis, but she knew enough to know that it always started with staring at a ring or a pendant or a watch or something. She didn't want Rob to do anything to her mind, not when she already had so many nasty and uncomfortable suspicions about what he'd done to her husband, and she instantly made a mental vow to break off the conversation as soon as he said anything about relaxing or getting sleepy. "It... I... I liked it, then," she sighed out reluctantly, unwilling to concede the rhetorical ground but unable to deny the heat in her memory. "I was watching the two of you, and it was hot."
Rob nodded, his fingers undulating almost imperceptibly to make the stone gleam and glitter in the afternoon sunlight. "And what was hot about it, Dorrie? It's okay, you're just telling me about your feelings. Jim's not here, and there's nothing you can say to hurt me right now." Oh, how Dorrie wished that wasn't true, but she knew he was correct. Lashing out at Rob would only drive Jim away, and she still loved her husband too much to let him go. She didn't want to go start a new life without him--she wanted her old one back.
And that meant humoring Rob. Or Doctor Hendricks, under the current circumstances. "It was hot because I... I liked watching him with another man," she murmured, squirming ever so slightly in her chair as she remembered the sultry throb of arousal that pulsed between her legs that first night in bed with the two of them. "I, I like watching." She felt a fierce blush pricking her cheeks, making her face hot and red as if she'd spent too long out in the Miami sun, but it seemed somehow absurd to try to keep her kinks and fetishes private from a man she'd had multiple threesomes with. Even if she usually spent most of them on the sidelines.
"It's okay, Dorrie," Rob said again, his tone a soothing balm to that prickly heat on her cheeks. "You don't need to feel embarrassed about it. They're your feelings. Just keep your eyes on the gem, send any anxiety or worry you feel into the depths of the stone, and keep talking. Why didn't you want to watch Jim with another woman?" Dorrie felt a clench of nervousness grip her chest, but she stared at the gently sparkling garnet crystal and gradually it ebbed until she could speak again. She had to admit, the bastard had a knack for getting people to open up. Even when he wasn't hypnotizing them.
"I was... worried," she sighed, blinking heavily as Rob shifted his arm and the stone rose up a tiny bit above her eyeline. "I... he, Jim and I, we were...." She felt another surge of worry, but it was getting easier and easier now to send those into the stone. "We were each other's first," she murmured at last, the words sounding ever so slightly slurred in her ears. She vowed to be even more vigilant about any attempt on Rob's part to make her relax or sleep. "He's never been with another woman, and I was worried that she might be able to give him something I couldn't. Another man felt... safe." Dorrie let out a short, bitter laugh, not so much purging the tension as expressing it.
"You were worried that if you let him be with someone else, you might lose him," Rob said, giving voice to her fears of the past and her even greater fears of the present. "You didn't think he'd want you if he had anyone else. He'd desire them more, and you'd be left behind." Dorrie couldn't help nodding. A sudden, spiky feeling of intense sadness welled up inside her, and she let it go into the gem with an almost desperate sense of gratitude. She didn't want to feel anything that painful, even if it meant surrendering more and more of herself to the blood-red stone that seemed to rise higher and higher as they talked.
"I... he... doesn't he?" she heard herself say, sounding almost on the verge of tears. "Doesn't he want you more?" It was funny, though; Dorrie almost didn't feel it, not anymore. The emotion was inside the gem, insulating her from it, and she could observe her own intense sadness and fear of losing her husband with a quiet detachment that almost felt good in comparison to the turmoil within the crystal. Dorrie stared up at it harder and harder, even as it rose so high that her eyes rolled back in her head until only the whites showed.
And then Rob spoke, and suddenly the absence of that anxiety made her feel even better. "Oh, no, Dorrie," he purred, his voice soft and coaxing. "He still loves you. He always loves you. But he knows what you wanted that night, what drove you to open up and ask him for that special and magical evening and what made you so hot you couldn't keep your fingers out of your cunt. He knows you love to watch, Dorrie, and he wants to give you exactly what you need to fulfill that desire." His free hand reached out, stroking her forearm until all the tension went out of her body. "It's okay, Dorrie. Listen to me. It's okay."
Dorrie's whole body sagged into the chair. The tightness in her jaw melted into slack, comfortable relaxation. It was fine, though, she reminded herself. Rob hadn't told her to relax like this. He wasn't the one making her eyelids droop and flutter as she stared at the gem. He wasn't, wasn't.... "It's okay to sleep now if you need to, Dorrie," Rob cooed, and Dorrie's head finally slumped forward onto her chest as she gave in to the dreamy lethargy in her mind.
