"You Don't Have to Worry"
Amanda doesn't know where she's going. The strong, tanned hand that holds her soft, pale fingers in its grip is leading her down the sidewalk, away from the coffee shop and past her hotel and into a parking garage she doesn't recognize in a part of the city that looks totally unfamiliar. Even if she were to snap out of her daze right this instant and wriggle free of the stranger's grasp, it would probably take her hours to find her way back to the tour group. She feels a strange, discordant surge of panic swelling up beneath the smooth surface of her tranquil calm, and she murmurs out, "Um... where...?" in a confused, drowsy voice that seems to take forever to bubble up from her groggy and bewildered brain.
But before she can assemble the disjointed words into a complete thought, the tall man looks over at her with his dark, piercing brown eyes and says, "You don't need to worry about that, Amanda." And his voice is so calm, so confident, so soothing and completely filled with certainty that Amanda feels it tug her thoughts right back down into placid compliance. It's such a wonderful promise, delivered with such absolute conviction directly to Amanda's slack, expressionless face that she can't help wanting to believe it despite the evidence. She doesn't want to worry. She doesn't want to feel the anxiety and stress that she knows she should be experiencing right now.
If she chooses to believe him, then she can simply sink back down into that wonderful sea of slow, drifting pleasure that he showed her how to experience back at the coffee shop. She can slip back into the tranquil depths of his eyes and let her thoughts float away, leaving only delicious relaxation and soft, lazy bliss behind. Amanda can feel her mind yearning to experience that sleepy euphoria again, pulling her toward it like an eager puppy straining at the end of the leash.
If she tries to think... she can feel that yawning sea of anxiety and fear every time she begins to realize what she's doing. She's walking with a strange man in a strange city, heading further and further away from the comfort and familiarity of her tour group on the suggestion of someone she's barely even talked with for twenty minutes and whose name she doesn't know. He's leading her to a dark gray sedan with tinted windows, guiding her into the passenger seat and buckling her into place with a click that even her fuzzy, befuddled mind can't help but hear as sinister. Nobody knows where she is. Nobody's looking for her.
So of course Amanda chooses to believe. It's the simplest decision in the world, a choice to move away from distress and toward pleasure, and she sags into the soft leather seat and lets her eyes go glassy and unfocused. She doesn't need to worry. It's a suggestion she wants to accept, a command that makes her life so much easier and happier and more relaxed that all she can do is let it seep into the back of her drowsy, mazy head and drift deeper into trance. The door closes, the man goes around the car, but Amanda can't stir herself fast enough to even realize properly what's happened, let alone take advantage before he gets in on the driver's side.
Once the car begins to move, the sense of helpless passivity deepens almost instantly into a feeling of total disassociation. Amanda knows, deep down, that her last chance to exert any control over the situation passed the moment that the stranger put the car into gear and began to drive, and the experience of being a passenger creeps into every aspect of her loose and drowsy thoughts. She feels like she's watching herself slump back against the soft cushions as he reclines her seat just enough to make sitting up too much of an exertion for her tired, sleepy body. She's merely following along, observing the stranger's hand as it creeps under her dress and pulls her skirt up to her waist. She's there, but she's not really
