Indecent Suggestion - By Elizabeth Bevarly Page 0,81
he said next came out in a rush of words so hurried that it took a couple of minutes for them to register. “Dorcas thought you and I were newlyweds who wanted to have wild, passionate sex, but we were too shy and inhibited and scared to do it, and we needed to get past our shyness, inhibitions and fear so we could do it, so she gave us both a posthypnotic suggestion that whenever we heard the word underwear we’d be overcome with desire for each other, and jump into each other’s arms and have wild, passionate sex, so the only reason you’ve been having sex with me lately is because of some subconscious trigger Dorcas planted in your brain, and it isn’t because you…” He paused for just a moment, then concluded, “It isn’t because of anything else.”
Slowly, understanding crept up on Becca until it dawned like a good solid blow to the back of her head. Dorcas hadn’t hypnotized them to quit smoking, she repeated to herself, which would explain why the two of them were still smoking. But she had hypnotized them to be turned on by each other, which would explain why—
No, she immediately told herself. That didn’t explain anything. How could she have been hypnotized to behave the way she had, to react to Turner as strongly as she had been reacting to him? Yes, her response to him had been sudden, and yes, it had been surprisingly strong. But that was just the point. Her emotions and responses to Turner had felt so real. Had been so real. How could they have been created by a posthypnotic suggestion?
For the past couple of weeks, she’d begun to suspect she was falling in love with him, and that was why she’d been behaving the way she had been. That somehow, she’d loved him for years, but for some reason had only just recently allowed herself to accept it. Who knew what caused people to finally understand something they should have comprehended all along?
Well, in this case, she thought, evidently it was a posthypnotic suggestion that did it. Which meant her feelings for Turner couldn’t be genuine at all. Was that possible, though? Could it really all have been nothing but a ruse? Surely not….
“But that’s…” she began. Unfortunately, she had no idea what to say after that. It was crazy. It was nuts. It made no sense.
But the more she thought about it, the more sense it began to make. The first time she’d felt so drawn to Turner, that night when the two of them had been working late in her cubicle, she’d been puzzled to no end about what had made her come on to him the way she had. One minute she’d been frustrated by the Bluestocking pitch, and sex had been the last thing on her mind. The next minute, she’d looked up at Turner and wanted nothing more than to be naked with him, writhing on top of her desk, with him buried deep inside her. What could have caused such an immediate and unexplainable change in her? Had he uttered the word underwear? Had she? She couldn’t remember now. But it was certainly likely, considering the campaign the two of them had been working on.
Was it really possible? she asked herself again, still unable to quite believe it. Could that be why it had happened? Because Dorcas had given her a subconscious desire for Turner that only came to the fore under the right stimulus?
Then something else hit her. Turner had been there in the hypnotherapist’s office that day, too. He’d been put under the influence the same way Becca had been. He’d heard the same things coming from Dorcas’s mouth that she had. So he must have been making love to her for all the same reasons she had been making love to him, right? He’d only been responding to her because of that same posthypnotic suggestion, right? He’d heard the word underwear whenever she had, and he’d reacted to that and not to Becca, right? So he couldn’t be any more in love with her than she was with him, right?
Right?
“But, Turner,” she said, still trying to make sense of everything and not having much success. “You’ve been operating under the same conditions, haven’t you? I mean, we were both under that day, and Dorcas gave us both the same posthypnotic suggestion. So you’ve been making love to me for the same reason, haven’t you?”