Chapter 1

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“Hypnosis,” he’d said, “isn’t like being asleep. You’ll be awake and fully in control the whole time. But you’ll be in a relaxed state and your subconscious will be open to new ideas and able to process them.”

Hannah could remember pretty much everything he said after that. He asked her to imagine herself on a warm, sunny day, walking in a garden. To imagine the detail of it, the grass, the flowers, their perfume, the feel of sun and breeze on her face. He asked her to imagine walking down steps in the garden, to lower levels, to a point where she felt comfortable and wanted to rest. After that he told her she was free to do anything she wanted to do, that if she wanted to have a cigarette she shouldn’t resist the urge. Rather, she should shift it to some other activity, something else that was enjoyable, rewarding, and helped her grow as a person. He told her there was a paradox about control. She was in control of her life, not because she could exert willpower and be stubborn, which used up emotional energy and would leave her exhausted, but because she could take her cravings and redirect them in positive ways. She would always find something better to do than smoke. The best way to be in control wasn’t to act like she had to be in control, but simply to believe it. When you do that, he said, the smoke (quite literally) will clear. It will leave you with clarity of purpose and intent, better and more positive ways to lead your life, and greater self-confidence.

And that was how Hannah gave up her 40-a-day habit. She traded it for…well, something else.

The weirdness kicked in pretty quickly, right about the time she would, in her former habitual-smoker lifestyle, have reached for her next cigarette.

Hannah wasn’t innocent. She knew exactly why the weirdness was happening. Her subconscious had been processing ideas and leaving her with, apparently, clarity of purpose and intent, better and more positive ways to lead her life, and greater self-confidence.

She was still exactly the same person: but then again, she wasn’t. She’d become someone new and different, someone with a more self-confident, clearer, positive intent.

An intent to do the things her subconscious had kept bottled up for, well, quite a while.

Two hours later Hannah sat in a café she’d found, a new addition to the student-heavy suburb where she still lived. There were old leather sofas, cheap plastic coffee tables and an eclectic mix of old prints and amateurish paintings from local artists. The solitary waiter/bartender, with his shaven head, tattoos and piercings, yet with deep liquid eyes, looked like he’d come straight on over from a horror film set. After serving her drink, he sat behind the bar reading something on a tablet.

Looking around, Hannah thought the down-at-heel arty ambience was cool; but she was the only customer, so maybe the place wouldn’t last that long.

She sipped at the large latte, and ideas rubbed together sensuously in her mind and created heat in her body. She’d taken the day off work, had time to chill and do self-indulgent non-smoker things before she’d found this place. She’d browsed for a new dress: stopping smoking saves money, so consider it an advance on the money I’ll save. She didn’t see a dress she wanted, because none of them fitted the fantasies that were running around in her head. Anyway, you can’t buy the fulfilment of fantasies in a shop.

Except you can, apparently, buy bondage gear in a charity shop. She’d looked into one of the three such shops in the tiny suburban mall, the one that helped fund a pet rescue centre. And among the shelves of old paperbacks, china and second-hand clothes, she found a pair of black leather cuffs with chunky buckles and heavy D-rings on them. There was no way you could pass them off as just a fashion item. Their sudden appearance in a random charity shop, so immediately after Hannah’s indecorous thoughts, was a completely unpredictable coincidence. Or synchronicity.

Unless, of course… Hannah had no religious or metaphysical convictions, but it seemed almost to be a message from the universe. Buy these and you’ll find what you’re looking for.

The latte was creamy in Hannah’s mouth, and the background music – raspy vocals and metallic-sounding folk guitar – growled at her: “Wake up, sinners!”

Yeah. Wake up, sinner! The smell of the coffee began to reawaken the old urge to smoke. She needed to keep her hands busy. Idly she pulled one of the cuffs from her capacious shoulder bag, toyed with it, felt the softness of the inner lining around her wrist. She could imagine herself comfortably restrained — because, after all, who wants to be tortured in an uncomfortable position? — and having things done to her that she wouldn’t allow if she could resist.

It was as much as she could do to keep her hand from stroking her thigh, her nails from tracing gently up the inside seam of her jeans.

When the waiter looked up from his pad, she ordered another coffee. He brought it to the table and, from her position on the low sofa, she admired thighs tightly defined under leather trousers, neat package there behind the zip, heavy metal buckle on the belt. He moved with the ease and grace of…a fox or a wolf, perhaps?

“Shopping?”

Hannah just knew where his gaze was directed.

“Uh… Yeah.” She raised her face, looked into those liquid brown eyes, smiled at him. “In a charity shop, strangely enough.”

“They normally come in pairs…”

He was leading her on. That was no bad thing. There’s the paradox. Taking control sometimes means giving it away. She pulled the second cuff from her bag, put it around the other wrist.

He watched her carefully, his dark eyes giving nothing away. Then he fished in a pocket and pulled out a small padlock, the kind you might use on a suitcase, a locker…or a pair of cuffs. Slowly, almost experimentally, he used it to lock the D-rings on the cuffs together. The soft click of the padlock was a shocking sensation, reverberating through Hannah’s brain and body. If he’d bent her over and slapped her ass it couldn’t have been more startling. Or more exciting.

“You can undo the buckles anytime,” he said, voice as liquid as his eyes, and as smooth as the latte. “So you’re not really restrained, unless you want to be. Enjoy your coffee. If you want me to remove the padlock, I’ll be at the counter. If not…” He nodded in the direction of the back wall. “The restroom is through that door. And please, make yourself….presentable.”

It was as much as Hannah could do just to nod, yes, I understand what you’re saying.

The whole scenario felt to Hannah like she’d either wandered unsuspecting into a parallel universe, or had somehow become a completely different person. Or both. How could that happen just by going for a mid-afternoon latte? She sipped the drink, feeling the weight of the cuffs and being very aware of how visible they’d be to anyone else in the place.

After a while, there were other people in the place, arty types about her age, with the dress and appearance of bohemian, creative, but minimum-wage lifestyles. Wrapped up in their own conversation, they paid her no attention. Hannah felt herself having to resist the bizarre urge to walk over to them, holding out the cuffs. Look! See how I’m in bondage, in a public place! Isn’t that worth a bit of your attention?

A woman in the group was tall and willowy with shoulder-length purple hair, a ring in her lip and a slashed T-shirt. Someone in their circle addressed her as “Rapture” as though that was her name. Perhaps the name was a reflection of her personality… Or was that just Hannah, projecting her own fantasies? Hannah could imagine this woman grinning deviously, telling how she’d been stripped, fucked and crucified in a nightclub a couple of days previously. Maybe she had.

Hannah finished her coffee. Didn’t even think about what she was going to do next, because the waiter’s words were still clear and vivid in her mind. She rose awkwardly from the sofa and walked across the floor, looking neither right nor left, to the door that led out to the restroom. Beyond it, a short corridor: peeling paint, ducting along the low ceiling, boxes stacked against the wall. The second door on the left was the restroom, larger than she expected, and with antique fittings. She closed the door but didn’t lock it.

Make yourself presentable. His words thrummed in her head, and her imagination told her what to do next. Remove shoes, jeans, panties. Her halter-neck top and front-clasp strapless bra came off without a need to remove the cuffs. Anyone watching might have thought she’d dressed for just such an event… She piled her clothes neatly on the small marble work surface next to the sink. Thought a little, and slipped back into her heels, black court heels with a couple of buckle straps. The shoes, in fact, she often wore to work.

And sat on the toilet, nude, feeling nervous, flushed, just a little degraded, and a lot excited. It occurred to her that the guy had said nothing about what he’d do to her. In fact he hadn’t said he’d do anything at all. For all Hannah knew, he was just going to make her wait there, to be discovered by the next person who needed to use the room…

And then the door opened and he was standing there with a wolf-like, predatory smile and those intense eyes boring into her.

“I knew,” he said, “you had something on your mind when you walked through the door. Now I know what it was.”

His right hand cupped her chin, thumb and forefinger hooking either side of her jawbones. When he pulled her firmly towards him she had no option but to follow the tug on her jaw, and it took her to her knees. It took her lips to within an inch of his cock, which now stood out firmly from the fly on his leather jeans. Her nostrils filled with the complex scents of man and leather. Scents that made her lick, and then open, her lips.

He guy removed his hand. Didn’t touch her. There was no caress of her breasts, no fist in her hair. Whatever Hannah wanted to do now was entirely up to her. She could back off, call and end to it. Or she could…

It slipped easily to the back of her mouth. Something metallic there as well, a piercing, a barbell style she didn’t know the name of. Not that names mattered. She brought her hands up, fingers searching for his balls, pulling at leather: he shrugged his jeans down far enough to give her access.

Closed her eyes. Concentrated on the sensations, moving her tongue around, then pushing it out as far as possible to give him sensation on the underside of his cock while also enabling her to take more of its length. The tip of her tongue was just able to reach the folds of his scrotum.

And all the time, Hannah was conscious that she’d put herself in this position. No one had forced her. This was an alternative personality coming out, one she’d repressed, one she’d felt guilty about, one that was bad-girl whorish, one where the pleasure came from being used and, perhaps, abused.

Her ears filled with the guk-guk and nngh-nngh of saliva, of breathing around a filled mouth, of swallowing cock. Yes, it was her making the noises. The bare walls of the toilet seemed to amplify them. Surely the other customers could hear what was going on? And all the time the cock was flexing, veins bulging and pumping. It seemed to go on forever. He was taking his time and she didn’t know how much longer she could keep her jaw that wide open. Blood pounded in her ears. She felt three hard pulses running the length of the cock and then her mouth was even fuller, flooded with cum, salty and sweet, the taste of defilement and submission and erotic surrender.

Only then did he grasp her hair, holding her head so she couldn’t release the cock from her mouth. There was no choice of spit-or-swallow; she could only let cum drool from between her lips and swallow the rest at the cost of being able to breathe.

“You’re crying.”

And yes, she was. Tears of…

Tears of what? Of relief, in a way. A barrier broken, a boundary crossed, an emotional dam burst.

“Doesn’t matter. It’s just…” She was lost for words. “A release of tension?”

He nodded sagely. “You know you look really beautiful with tears on your cheeks?” And cum spilling down her chin, probably.

Hannah recovered a little of her old, feisty self. “I bet you say that to all the girls when you make them cry.”

He laughed. “Yeah, some of them.” Then: “You’d make a nice extra little feature for the café. Imagine yourself tied in here all day, available for anyone who wants to come in here and use you.”

The thought caught her like a punch in the solar plexus, a slap on her naked cunt.

“Do I take it from that reaction you’re excited by the thought? Turn round for a moment.” He released the padlock on the cuffs, but then secured them behind her back. “I’m going to take your clothes. And leave you here, ready for someone…anyone else.” As he talked, he used a clean tissue to wipe cum from around her mouth, solicitously, caringly. Then he twisted around, pulling a long length of cloth from a cupboard. “Don’t worry. I’m going to blindfold you, so you can always imagine it’s not really happening.”

As if that were likely. Leaving her in her own personal darkness, and presumably having picked up her clothes, he was gone.

She could hear music, a soft buzz of conversation from the bar. Once, a siren from a passing police car. Alone with her thoughts, the thoughts began to dominate. How she’d come from one state of being to another, from corporate career girl to brazen fuckslut, in the space of, what, a couple of hours. How that unleashing of her subconscious might affect the rest of her life. How the two might, or might not, be able to co-exist.

And then the door clicked open and shut. Already on her knees, Hannah opened her mouth. She expected it to be filled with an unknown cock, the cock of a complete stranger. The anticipation of it gave her nervous butterflies in her belly. Gave her a thrill that made her thighs tremble. She’d never known that quicksilver quiver of the inner thighs could be, literally, a physical manifestation of intense excitement.

What she didn’t expect, as the head of the cock pushed past her lips, was this: a throaty female purr, a light contralto voice that said “And I thought he was joking!”

The woman was behind Hannah, knees in the small of her back, supporting her as long fingers with sharp nails explored her breasts. Meanwhile she had no sense of what kind of man was behind the cock, the thrust and harsh breathing of the fuck. When hands crept up to hold Hannah’s head, forcing her forward to take more of the length, they were the woman’s.

They left her lying on the hard, cold floor, coughing, spunk dribbling from her mouth and nose. The world receded to a vanishing point, or Hannah did. She had no idea how long she stayed there. Eventually, she moved enough to rub the makeshift rag blindfold off her head. The restroom seemed bright and clinical. The waiter had indeed removed all her clothes. She’d have to…

Cautiously, awkwardly, Hannah pulled the door open, looked at the corridor. She wondered if she was being forced to emerge naked into a crowded room. But the café was empty, in semi-darkness, blinds down. The only light came from behind the counter where the waiter sat calmly reading his pad. He looked up.

“I was wondering if you were still there,” he chuckled. “I was just thinking I should come and see how you were.”

“I’m… I don’t know. How was I?”

“When Carmen and Mitchell came back from fucking you, they said you were smoking hot.”

He looked on in astonishment as the naked, cuffed woman stood in the middle of his café, laughing raucously.