Indecent Suggestion - By Elizabeth Bevarly Page 0,76
dear.”
“Dorcas?” Turner prodded.
“Tell me something, Turner,” she began again, still offering him no explanation for her line of questioning.
“I’ve already told you a lot of somethings,” he pointed out, biting back his irritation. He didn’t like it when people played games with him. Especially when he didn’t know the rules they were playing by. “But you’re not telling me what I want to know.”
She ignored his comment. “Were you and Becca sexually involved before coming to see me?”
“No,” he answered without thinking. “We were just friends.” Well, Becca was just friends, he amended to himself. Dorcas didn’t have to know anything more about that. She didn’t have to know about any of this. None of this was her business. So why was she going on about it?
“But you are sexually involved now,” she said.
He nodded, still not sure why he was continuing with the conversation.
“And when did that begin?” she asked.
He thought back. That first time Becca had tried to get jiggy with him had been during the week before they made their pitch to win the Bluestocking Lingerie account, he recalled. Which had also been the week they saw Dorcas. Yeah, that was right. In fact, that first time happened the day after their session with Dorcas. Hmm. How about that? What a coinci—
No. No, no, no, no, no, he thought. Nein. Nyet. No way, José. The two events couldn’t possibly be related. That was just nuts.
In spite of that, he told her, “The first time happened the day after our session with you.”
She closed her eyes again, but this time color flooded her face.
“Dorcas?” Turner asked warily. “Is there something wrong?”
She sighed and opened her eyes again. “I’m afraid so.”
And there was something about a hypnotherapist one hadn’t quite trusted, but whom one had seen reluctantly anyway, telling one there was something wrong that sent a cold shiver down one’s spine.
“Dorcas,” he said softly, making himself voice the question to which he was pretty sure he didn’t want to know the answer, “did you try to help me and Becca quit smoking?”
After a moment’s hesitation, she shook her head. “No. I mistook you for an earlier appointment who I now realize never showed up. At the time, I thought my quit-smoking appointment was the no-show. Now, however, I realize that was you and Becca. You arrived early for your appointment, didn’t you?”
Wordlessly, Turner nodded.
In response, Dorcas only looked more concerned.
He eyed her warily. “And this earlier appointment you mistook us for,” he said. “What was it they wanted to be hypnotized for?”
Dorcas hesitated again, then, very softly, very slowly, she told him, “They were a newlywed couple. And they were having problems with…” She inhaled a deep breath and released it slowly. “They were having problems with…consummating their marriage.”
“Meaning?” Turner asked, a sick feeling rolling into his belly.
“They were having trouble getting over their shyness and inhibitions about making love. Three weeks after their wedding, they still hadn’t had sex. They wanted me to hypnotize them and help them get over their inhibitions.”
Turner was certain he must have misunderstood. How could anyone need to be hypnotized for something so lame? “I’m sorry?” he said. “Could you say that again?”
“Although this couple had been married for weeks,” Dorcas repeated, “they weren’t able to have sex because they were both too modest and fearful about the sex act.”
Turner let that sink in for a minute, then said, “And you helped them—or, at least the people you thought were them, which were actually me and Becca—get over that modesty and fear?”
“Yes,” she said.
“And how did you do that, Dorcas?”
She inhaled another one of those deep breaths, again exhaling it slowly. “By planting a posthypnotic suggestion in both of you that every time you heard a certain word, you would be overcome with sexual desire for each other, and that you would have no fears or inhibitions about the frequency or adventurousness of sex.”
This time it was Turner’s eyes that fluttered closed, as he was hit by a barrage of realizations he really didn’t want to face. “And what word was that?” he asked.
“Underwear,” Dorcas told him.
“Underwear,” he repeated. A word that had come up often once he and Becca had landed the Bluestocking Lingerie account. Right after seeing Dorcas Upton.
Oh, God…
“Are you telling me,” he said, amazed he could even find his voice, let alone string words together, “that the only reason Becca and I have been making love this past month is because we both keep hearing the word underwear?”