Cindi knocked on the door, almost hoping Janet wouldn't answer. At least, she thought that she hoped that Janet wouldn't answer; but as long moments passed and Cindi stood there in silence, she had plenty of time to change her mind back and forth on the issue. Was Janet avoiding her? Did she want Janet to avoid her? Did she want to avoid Janet? Did she need more time to think about last night? Was she just chickening out by wanting more time to think about last night?
Cindi looked at her watch, then knocked on the door again. Another minute or two more, she decided, and then she'd let herself chicken out. Maybe Janet wasn't home. Maybe she was with a...client. Maybe she really was avoiding Cindi. But last night, she'd said--Cindi flushed a little as she remembered a few of the things Janet had said last night. No, she had probably just gone out for lunch or something. Oh, well, just her bad luck to miss Janet, couldn't be helped, she'd have to stop by tomorrow, guess it was just one of those timing things and nobody could blame her for turning around right this second and--
The door opened. "Cindi!" Janet said with a smile. "Glad to see you again! Come in!" Her long, dark hair was still damp, so she must have just gotten out of the shower, but Janet looked like she hadn't bothered to get dressed at all since last night. She was wearing a sheer silken robe that was cinched loosely enough that Cindi could see she wasn't wearing anything at all underneath it. Cindi suddenly felt like she didn't know where to look.
She settled for accepting the invitation, stepping into the living room with an almost awkward haste. "I, um...I came over to talk," Cindi said, starting to sit down on the couch, then changing her mind suddenly and pacing back and forth across the room. "Just to talk," she said rapidly, "not to, um, anything else." She felt heat suffusing her cheeks, and knew that she had to be blushing, but she pressed forward anyway. "I'm sorry I left before you woke up this morning, I didn't want to worry you, but I had to take some time to think about--"
"You didn't worry me," Janet said, interrupting the speech that Cindi had been rehearsing in her head for about three hours now. "I knew you'd be back." She sat down on the couch that Cindi had avoided, resting one foot on the floor and putting the other up on the couch in a way that exposed quite a bit of her bare leg. "I knew it even before you came home with me last night. The only one who hasn't figured it out yet is you, pet."
Cindi froze for a moment, trying desperately to repress a shiver at hearing the word 'pet'. Especially at hearing the word 'pet' in Janet's husky, purring tones. Cindi suddenly felt like she was right back there in the bedroom last night, hearing the words whispered in her ear but not really thinking about them because Janet's fingers felt so fucking good inside her...she rallied gamely, though, latching onto the implications of Janet's comments and using it to get back on-script. "Janet, I'm sorry, but I'm not a lesbian," she said, looking over at Janet for a reaction. Then she looked away, because she didn't want to punctuate the words "I'm not a lesbian" by staring at Janet's body, and she wasn't quite ready to meet Janet's gaze just yet.
Janet didn't react right away, though. It took a couple of seconds before she started laughing. But it took her a lot longer than that to stop. She let her head fall back and slowly slid into a prone position as she giggled helplessly, her robe almost falling open as she convulsed in laughter. By the time she'd finally calmed down, Cindi had overcome her nervousness about where to look and was glaring at her very pointedly. "I'm sorry, pet," Janet said at last, wiping moisture from the corners of her eyes. "I really am. It's just...'I'm not a lesbian'?" She looked like she was almost about to start laughing again.
"I'm...I'm not!" Cindi said, feeling more than a little stung. "What happened last night...I was curious about what you said you did for a living, and one thing just kind of...led to another. But it doesn't mean that I like girls!"
Janet propped herself back up on the couch again. "Of course you like girls, pet. You're right in saying that doesn't necessarily make you a lesbian; you could be bisexual. But you can't tell me that women don't turn you on."
Cindi shook her head angrily, unsure of exactly what she was angry about but welcoming the distraction from all the other feelings Janet was stirring up. "They don't! I don't look at...at pictures of girls, or ogle women in the street, or..."
Janet stretched languorously, almost making a liar of Cindi right then and there about not ogling women. "It's not about that, Cindi. Being bisexual just means a woman can turn you on, and we both already know that I can do that. Remember the way that the arousal washed into your body, pet?" Janet's voice suddenly seemed quieter, her cadence slower. "Like waves of warm water, slowly lapping at your skin. Each wave coming in a little higher, the water getting deeper and deeper...like the tide coming in, pet, as more and more of your thoughts sank beneath that warm, wet need. Remember, my sweet pet?" Cindi nodded distantly, not quite sure when she'd locked eyes with Janet but not wanting to stop.
"But of course," Janet said, her voice abruptly losing its purring qualities and becoming conversational once more, "that's not what I really meant when I said that I knew you'd be coming back." Her eyes lost their hypnotic intensity, at least for the moment. "I only meant that I suspected that once you'd had some time to think things over by yourself, you'd want to come back and talk things over with me."
Cindi nodded sheepishly. "Oh," she said quietly. She felt...Cindi fumbled around in her mind for a word, and only managed to come up with 'obvious'. But it was the word that fit. She felt as though everything she was feeling and everything she was thinking was an open book to Janet, and one she'd leafed through a few dozen times already. How many other curious young women had Janet invited over after a few drinks at a party? How many other girls had wound up agreeing to try hypnosis for themselves, just to see what it felt like? How many other girls had ended up on their knees, trembling and quaking as Janet's words stirred wave after endless wave of dreamy bliss in their minds and their bodies?
Janet interrupted her silent reverie. "So," she said, "what did you want to talk about first? Apart from your sexual orientation, that is."
"I...I don't want to hurt your feelings, Janet." Cindi said. That was from her mental script, too; Cindi liked Janet, she really did. She didn't want to walk away from this having wrecked a potential friendship with one night of drunken abandon...well, not really drunken, Cindi admitted to herself. She hadn't had that much to drink at the cast party, and she'd almost totally sobered up by the time Janet offered to show her what trance felt like. But the hypnosis had lowered her inhibitions just as surely as alcohol would have. Cindi would never have gotten up the nerve to do...what they did last night...if she was thinking clearly.
Cindi realized she'd trailed off again. "Sorry," she said. "I guess I'm a little nervous. I, um, I really don't want to hurt your feelings--"