Josie didn't trust the way Marina was looking at her. She had that crafty, playful look in her eyes that told Josie that the next hour was definitely going to end with Josie flat on her back between Marina's thighs; everything else was just a question of how they got there. And of course that was exactly the kind of terrible, awful, horrible fate that Josie struggled so hard to avoid every time. And yet every time she failed. How strange that was.
"What is it?" she said in a resigned tone, setting her book down and giving Marina her full attention. Which was far from unpleasant-Marina had one of those bodies that drew the eyes without her even trying. She had the most beautiful curves-soft, lush, and wide in all the right places to make a woman's mouth water. And her dark eyes, set in an olive complexion that showed her Mediterranean heritage perfectly, always seemed to glitter like polished onyx. Josie could stare into those eyes for hours. Sometimes she did.
"What's what?" Marina said, giving Josie her best innocent face. It wasn't very good, but then again, Marina wasn't very innocent. When Josie's parents told her that everything would change when she got to college, she suspected that this wasn't exactly what they meant...but it wasn't like Josie was complaining. Usually because her mouth was too full to talk.
But it was always more fun to make Marina work for it. "What do you want?" Josie asked, her voice mock stern. "And don't tell me it's nothing. You've been staring at me for the last fifteen minutes now, and I'm pretty sure I caught you licking your lips when you thought I wasn't looking." It was really more like a half-hour, but Josie always liked to at least pretend she was studying too hard to notice Marina noticing her. It was a lot more fun to be seduced when you could at least make a claim at being the angelic one.
"Oh, really it's-" Marina started, before realizing that Josie had already outflanked her first conversational gambit. "Well, I was just thinking that you might want to play a little game with me. Something fun, easy to learn, even kind of educational."
"Educational?" Josie said, arching one eyebrow. It was one of her best tricks. She was pretty sure Marina said unbelievable things just to watch her do it.
"Sure!" Marina said, leaning forward in her chair. "It teaches basic math skills, probability..." She held up a pair of translucent red dice and said, "You'll learn a lot, I promise."
"You want me to play craps with you." Josie tried very hard to keep her mouth in a frown, and not let it quirk up at the corners. It would not do at this point to burst into giggles at her roommate's transparent excitement. "You know I'm even more broke than you are, right?"
Marina replied, "Well, that's no problem!" She rolled the dice in her fingers, holding them up a little to let the light catch them. The gesture looked casual, but Josie was far too familiar with Marina's little ways of drawing her attention to ordinary objects that looked very pretty when the light sparkled through them to miss the implications. "We can come up with some other stakes to play for, if you don't want to play for money."
Josie realized she'd walked right into that one, but she blamed it on the dice. She always felt like her IQ dropped about twenty points when Marina held up something bright and shiny for her to look at. She still couldn't quite believe how easy it was to be hypnotized-she always thought that stuff only happened on television until the evening her roommate responded to her derisive comments about Patrick Jane by mentioning that she did hypnosis all the time. Josie squirmed at the memory. That was an...instructional evening.
Josie realized that she'd actually been sitting there staring at the dice for a solid minute without answering, and her brain lurched into action. "Um, like what?" she said, all too aware that Marina was eyeing her like a starving woman looks at a steak dinner.
"Well," Marina said, still playing with the dice in her hand, "I was thinking we could make a little wager with these shiny, sparkly dice. Just something kind of fun, maybe a little silly. But I think you'll find the idea very attractive after you listen to my words and let yourself think about what I'm saying. I think that once you let it all sink in, you'll find yourself nodding along in perfect agreement. Don't you?"
Josie caught her head bobbing up and down, instinctively, and she blinked a few times to clear her mind. "Let's hear what it is, first," she said, aware that her voice sounded just a tiny bit slurred. She thanked her lucky stars that Marina was only mischievous-the way that voice wrapped around her clit and tugged made it really hard to say no at a time like this.
"It's very simple," Marina said, her eyes gleaming with excitement as the trap closed. "You give my pretty, glittery dice a roll and see how they come up. On a seven or an eleven, you feel a wave of pleasure washing through your whole body, getting more intense every single time. If it's any other number, you feel yourself getting more and more drowsy and obedient until you stop thinking and go completely into my hypnotic power." She laughed. Josie tried not to notice how sinister that laugh was. "It's win-win!"
Josie had to admit, it did sound like a win-win situation. But she was also pretty sure that 'had to admit' wasn't entirely a figure of speech when she was feeling like this. She felt like she should clarify the situation at least a little, here. Just to make sure that Marina didn't take advantage of her. More than usual. Take more advantage than usual. Josie blinked hard again, trying to shake the feeling like her thoughts were getting stuck together.
"So wait," Josie said, enunciating her words a little too carefully. "You said if I roll any of the bad numbers, I'll start slipping into a trance." She emphasized 'start', just to keep her subconscious from getting any sneaky ideas. "How many times can I roll the bad numbers before going under, and how long will I stay hypnotized once I drop?"
Marina smiled the cheerful grin of a salesperson who has gotten into the house and was now discussing the payment plan for the encyclopedia volumes. "Well, that does depend on how much you want to resist," she said. "But I would imagine you could probably roll those bad numbers...six times? Maybe seven if you're really determined not to fall into my deep, irresistible hypnotic power?" Josie really hoped Marina didn't notice her eyelids flutter when she heard the words 'deep' and 'irresistible'. It was a faint hope.
"And of course, I'll give you your mind back just as soon as you need it back." Josie knew what that meant. If she rolled those bones badly, she wasn't waking up until their Sunday night study session. Marina had a habit of keeping Josie under until she was sexually sated. This wouldn't be so much of a problem if she didn't also have a habit of getting turned on by seeing Josie in trance.
Part of Josie wanted to agree to the deal as it stood. But that was the part that was still looking at the dice and thinking about how pretty they were. How shiny. How beautiful it was to stare at them and lose track of her surroundings...
She shook her head a little to clear it. "Condition," she said, holding up her index finger in the air as if to politely interrupt her descent into trance. "I can stop any time I want before going under, and if I do I wake up completely and you don't try anything sneaky to trigger me for the rest of the weekend."
Marina looked entirely too happy to accept those terms. "Done. Stronger pleasure every time you win, deeper trance every time you lose, and you can walk away whenever you feel like it. I promise." She held out the dice. Josie stared at them for a surprisingly long time before figuring out what she was supposed to do with them.
She knelt down on the floor at the edge of the little pink throw rug they'd put down over the hardwood floor, and cupped the dice in her outstretched hands. Her palms felt more than a little sweaty, and she blew on them to evaporate a little of the moisture. And not, she told herself, for luck. The luck came with the second breath. Then, with a little flick of her wrist, Josie rolled the dice.
Six. Josie suddenly gained a new and deeply personal understanding of why the game was called 'craps'-as her eyes fluttered hard staring at the pips on the dice, all she could think to herself was, 'Oh, crap.' She only imagined she was foggy before; compared to the sudden wave of exhaustion that washed through her, just listening to Marina talk had been like drinking Red Bull. She thought about tapping out right then and there.
But Marina had already scooped up the dice and returned them to her hand, pressing Josie's fingers around them with a little wink. "First time unlucky," she said, her breath warm against Josie's cheek. "You're bound to get on a hot streak soon. And then just think of all that pleasure, Josie. You know how good I can make you feel with just my voice when you're in a trance. You know how responsive your body gets to my commands. Just imagine how good it's going to feel when you see those numbers and the tide of pure bliss flows into you. And over you. And through you."
