Under His Spell (5 page)

“L
ET’S GO OUT
again tonight.”

Thanks to the miracles of Bluetooth, Nicky didn’t even need to take her hands off her keyboard to answer her little sister. “Sorry, Tammy, I’ve got to—”

“Work. No, you don’t. It’s Friday.”

Nicky didn’t even bother trying to explain that this crisis was different. Her boss had made it clear that if she even whispered the word layoff, she’d be fired on the spot. So she didn’t say anything. But it was one more stresser which threatened to send her over the edge. She keyed a new number into her spreadsheet and studied the result.

“Nicky!”

“Hmm? Oh, sorry. I can’t. I got in late today, this report isn’t setting up right, and—”

“And it’s Friday! Come on, Nicky. You had a good time last night, didn’t you?”

Her fingers froze over the number pad and her heart started thudding triple time. Her sister had finally managed to grab all her attention. “What do you mean?”

“What do you mean, what do I mean?”

Nicky clenched the edge of her desk, forcing herself to keep her voice normal. Even. “Tammy, I am not in the mood to play.”

“Like that’s different. Come on, sis, you relaxed last night. You were almost serene there at the end, don’t you remember? You actually forgot your phone on the table. I had to grab you and drop it into your purse. When was the last time that happened? You forgetting your cell?”

“Never,” Nicky murmured. Then she shook her head, though no one was there to see her. She didn’t remember forgetting her phone. She just remembered her sunlit island paradise and the god who’d created it for her. That the “god” was actually Jimmy Ray from high school just added more confusion to the whole situation. He’d been a friend when she needed one. A sweet guy she’d liked but never really thought much about in high school. Her life was too busy with other things, with flashier things, if she were to be honest.

But Jimmy Ray wasn’t forgettable now. She should know. She’d been trying to forget him all day, only to catch herself a moment later remembering the feel of his hands on her, the stroke of his tongue—and the way she had felt so absolutely free with him. That was the part she really couldn’t forget. She’d felt so safe that she had let herself do whatever sprang into her head with him. That hadn’t happened to her before. Ever.

What would she give to go to that place again? The question had been tantalizing her all day long. But then reality would hit with a gut-twisting wrench. She had school loans to pay off, a condo the bank mostly owned, a nest egg that was more like a nest prayer. She had to work, damn it. Jobs were on the line, and not just hers. So she swiveled her office chair to page through the
dozens of papers on her desk, but her mind wasn’t really on her task. It had wandered somewhere else completely. “Hey, do you remember Jim from high school?”

There was a long pause on the other end of the line. “Jim who?”

“Jimmy. Dorky Jimmy—”

“Math geek guy! Yeah, his brother, Rick, owns the club we went to last night. What ever happened to him?”

“He became the Magic Man and starred on amateur night.”

“No way!” Tammy’s voice echoed the same shock that still reverberated through Nicky’s brain. “Can’t be. The Magic Man was…well, he was…”

“Cute. I know.”

“Hot. I bet he has killer pecs under that tux.”

Oh, yes. Jimmy Ray did indeed have killer pecs. She’d gotten an up close look at them this morning.

“Oh, wow. I never would have guessed that. How’d you find out?”

“Um…it just came to me this morning.” Right after she’d woken up spooned against him.

“Oh,” Tammy said, obviously disappointed. “Then you don’t
know,
you’re just guessing. Which means it’s not him.”

“Trust me,” Nicky drawled, “it’s him.”

“Trust you on a people thing. Hmmm. Nope, don’t think so.”

Nicky frowned and she actually lifted her gaze from the reports on her desk. “No really. It’s him.”

“No really, sis, you suck at people memory. Numbers, shipping lanes, even employees—not a problem. But real people? Not so much.”

“That doesn’t even make sense!”

“What doesn’t make sense is that you’re a gorgeous
woman who spends all her time working. What’s up with that, Nicky? Get out of the office! Practice those rusty people skills. Come to the comedy club with me tonight.”

Nicky sighed. They’d come full circle in this conversation. Unfortunately, she couldn’t bring herself to agree with her sister. Not after last night’s disastrous escapade. At the moment, she just wanted to slink her way home, bury her head under the pillows and not come out until next year.

“Sorry, Tammy,” she finally said, her breath short because of the tightness in her chest. “I really do have a lot of work to do. Maybe tomorrow. Or next week. That’d be better.”

“Yeah, sure. Like that’ll happen,” her sister groused.

“Don’t be like that—” Nicky began, but Tammy interrupted.

“You’re going to have to face life someday, Nicky. One day you’re going to look up and realize you’ve spent yours trapped in that hole you call an office.”

“Tammy—”

“Gotta go. It’s time for my pedicure. Bye!”

The line went dead. Nicky grimaced as she pulled the earpiece off her head. Then she stared at the Bluetooth connector. Did it mean something that her ear felt weird without the thing attached to her head?

She looked down at the reports on her desk, flicking her eyes at her computer screen. There was a ton of work for her to do here, but she couldn’t force herself back to it. Her mind kept wandering.

It had been that way all day. As much as she tried to lose herself in her job, certain memories kept intruding. There wasn’t any particular order to the thoughts. She’d
flash on Jimmy standing naked and angry before her. Then Jimmy onstage as the Magic Man. Then Jimmy’s hurt expression when he realized she hadn’t a clue who he was. And most jarring of all, the loud bang of his bathroom door this morning when she wouldn’t even talk to him.

It wasn’t that her morning e-mails had been all that important or that she’d needed to absolutely read every last one that second. But what did she say to the man who had rocked her world the night before? Nerdy Jimmy Ray had given her the best orgasm of her life, and she just didn’t know what to say about that. She didn’t even know what to think about that, except that she wanted more.

She’d never had a one-night stand before. Never really had time, to tell the truth. So rather than face him this morning, she’d buried her nose in her phone and pretended not to be excruciatingly aware of his amazing half-naked body less than three feet away from her. Then he’d stomped away in disgust—not that she blamed him—and she’d boogied out the door as fast as she could move in three-inch pumps.

Now here she was at the end of an unproductive work day, and she still couldn’t get him out of her mind. He’d hypnotized her, seriously put her deep in a way she never thought possible. So much so that she’d gone to his house and told him about her nipple fantasy. How had he done that?

Her face heated to crimson at just the thought. At least she hadn’t confessed any of her
other
fantasies. Nipples were the most mundane of what she wanted. But still, whatever would possess her to tell him that? To stalk him at night to do that?

She leaned back in her chair in stunned shock. The
answer was obvious. She
wouldn’t
do that. Ever. Stalk a stranger and tell him her fantasies?
Never.

Which meant someone else had made her do it. Jimmy. He had put in a posthypnotic suggestion or something. He’d planted something in her brain so powerful that she had leaped right over all her inhibitions and gone straight to hot sex in his house. Good God, it wasn’t possible! And yet…she had no other explanation for her behavior.

She snatched up her phone and quickly found his number. Then she started to thumb it in, only stopping herself with a physical jerk.

What was she doing? If he had truly planted some powerful suggestion in her brain, then she ought to be running screaming in the other direction. She stared at the number on her phone. The compulsion to hit Send was so strong! She wanted…no, she needed to talk to him, to see him again. Why? What for? For an embarrassing repeat of this morning? Never! So why the need to call him?

Was she still hypnotized? Still under the grip of his mental suggestion or something? Everything inside her rebelled at the thought. She was a smart, intelligent woman. She couldn’t possibly be under some hypnotic influence. Maybe she’d just really, really needed to get off, so to speak. That was way more logical than some heebie-jeebie hypnosis. But then why waste hours today thinking about him? This report was the most important thing in her life right now. Close to a thousand jobs were at stake. She needed to get it done and get it done right! She had to put all thoughts of Jimmy away.

With sudden resolve, she put down her phone. She was going to focus exclusively on work for the next couple hours. But just as she made to turn the thing
off, her breath started to choke in her throat. With a dispassionate stare, she saw that her palms were slick with sweat. Next came the pain between her shoulder blades that expanded through her chest along with the spikes that split through her temples.

Another panic attack. They’d started about a year ago. Nothing major. They’d only happened a couple times before. She always hyperventilated in a sweaty, can’t breathe, can’t live kind of way, but then it faded. She just had to wait it out. She’d learned to distance her mind from the disaster that was going on through her body. She wasn’t going to die. She wasn’t going to stop breathing. She just had to live through the agony shooting through her chest. It would pass. It would pass, would pass…pass…

She sat sprawled in her office chair. Her blouse was plastered to her sweating torso and she was still panting. But the pain was receding, she was indeed taking in real oxygen, and she had not died. The panic attack was gone, and she would soon feel normal once again.

She glanced up at her office door. It was still closed. No one had come in, no one knew what had happened, so she could pretend it never had. That was, in truth, the reason why she had taken to closing her office door. These attacks were much more disturbing to other people than they were to her. They passed. The pain receded. She could go back to her real life now.

The real question was why it had happened just then. The answer, of course, was right there on her desk. The attack had hit at the very idea that she
not
contact Jimmy. Something was going on here. Something more than fantasy island sex.

She grimaced as she lifted her hair off her neck. The brush of air across her sweaty skin felt nice, but it also
solidified her resolve. This had to end, whatever
this
was. Her life was difficult enough without having sex fests push her into sweaty panic attacks. She snatched up her phone and hit the send button.

T
HIS WAS A BAD IDEA,
Jim thought as he crossed the street and headed down the block. This was perhaps one of the worst ideas he’d ever had. But when Nicky had called him, clearly overwrought, he hadn’t been able to say no. She’d spouted all sorts of nonsense, something about him putting a posthypnotic sex idea in her head. She hadn’t sounded angry, really. More distraught in a way that went beyond one-night-stand embarrassment. And that’s what did him in. He couldn’t ever resist a damsel in distress, especially when that damsel was Nicky.

It wasn’t PC of him, was certainly not something he’d confess to anyone in this day and age. But yeah, he had a chivalrous streak a mile wide. When a woman was in trouble, he couldn’t resist running to her rescue any way he could. And since this particular woman was Nicky, he was doomed the moment he’d picked up the phone. So here he was, about to enter a café near his home, just because he couldn’t stop the stupid swell in his chest that made him want to be Nicky’s magic man.

He pulled upon the restaurant’s door with a fatalistic
shrug. Only about half the tables were full, so he saw her immediately. Hard to miss her tight bun, dark suit and legs that went up to her neck. Everything about her was neat, precise and so hot he nearly broke out in a sweat.

She liked a lace bra beneath that demure silk blouse. He knew what she smelled like when her thong was dripping wet. And he knew the sounds of abandon she made when she came apart on his lips. He’d peeled back the layers of her tight, corporate exterior and touched the wanton beneath. And damn if he didn’t want to do it again.

The restaurant was narrow, the tables marching in a straight line back from the front door. There were more intimate booths along the side, but she’d chosen a table dead center in the room. He took his time crossing to her, studying her as he moved. She’d set her menu to the side and was sitting precisely still. The only sign of agitation came from the way she kept crossing and uncrossing her legs beneath the table. She linked her feet together at the ankle, then released them to push one heeled pump into the floor. Then she flattened her foot before crossing her ankles again. He counted five shifts in the time it took him to make it to her side.

“Hello, Nicky. You look very corporate tonight.”

Her gaze shot to him, and he could see that her face was still tinged with panic. Her eyes were wide, her mouth pinched, and she kept her jaw tightly clenched.

“I—I don’t know how to answer that,” she said. “Was that a compliment or a jab?”

“Just a statement of fact,” he said as he slid in beside her. “Does it have to be something more?”

Her gaze followed him with a wary anxiety. “I don’t
know. The Jimmy I remember didn’t have any guile. I don’t know about the Magic Man.”

He almost laughed at that. He’d picked that name with her in mind. Well, her and the Heart song. Either way, he’d wanted to be mesmerizingly special to a girl. To Nicky. Who was staring at him as if he was about to turn into a serial killer. He sighed.

“‘Jimmy’ sounds like a pet dog. My name is Jim now. I sometimes even go by James. But not Jimmy, not the Magic Man, not anything weird.”

She nodded slowly, and her eyes lost some of the anxiety in them. “Okay. Jim. Thank you for coming to see me.”

He didn’t have a chance to respond as the waitress delivered coffee to the table for her, then asked him if he wanted a drink. He ordered a soft drink and dinner without even looking at the menu. He’d had his own share of confusion about yesterday. He’d spent a good deal of his adolescence mooning after Nicky. Last night had been a fantasy come true for him, but this morning’s scene had hurt. She’d meant so much to him way back when. That she didn’t even remember him come morning had cut deep. Even though he wasn’t an anxious kid anymore, he sure as hell didn’t want to expose himself to more pain. But if he had a real shot at Nicky, an honest shot for a relationship, then he didn’t want to throw that away.

Which left him confused and nervous and all the things he thought he’d outgrown. So rather than talk to her, he stalled with food. At least if he was eating, he wouldn’t be struggling for something to say to her. Besides, they made the best meat loaf here, especially when layered with extra barbecue sauce.

When the waitress turned for Nicky’s order, Ms. Corporate shook her head. “I’m not hungry,” she said.

He arched a brow at her. “The brain needs food to work right. How many years have you lived on just coffee?”

She quirked a brow at him. “I eat,” she said defensively. “Just not when…not…” Her face tightened into a grimace. “My stomach isn’t so settled right now.”

“How about a bowl of soup? If memory serves, your favorite was broccoli cheddar.”

Her eyes widened. “You remember that?”

That and a whole lot more, but he didn’t say that. Instead, he looked at the waitress. “She’ll have the broccoli cheddar in a bread bowl.” The waitress nodded and walked away, which left him once again sitting awkwardly across from Nicky. And one look at her face told him she was feeling at least as anxious as he was.

He shifted in his seat and decided to go straight for the honest truth. “I didn’t plant a post, pre, or during hypnosis suggestion, Nicky. It was a stage act. I made you throw your cell into a volcano. And sing. You still sing beautifully, by the way. Still in the church choir?”

She shook her head. “I gave that up years ago. No time.”

“Pity.”

She didn’t answer, choosing instead to bury her face in her coffee mug.

“I didn’t ask you to come to my house, to undress on my porch, or anything else beyond that,” he said.

“Yes, you did,” she said, her voice tight and high.

“No, Nicky—”

“You said, ‘And I wanted to make your fantasies come true.’ I heard you say that and…” She bit her lip
as her gaze zipped to his face then darted away again. “I heard you say that and I was still…hypnotized or something…and…and…”

He frowned, thinking back. He remembered exactly when he’d said those words, but she couldn’t have heard them. The bar was so noisy. She couldn’t possibly have heard him. Except she obviously had.

He leaned forward. “Even so, even if you did hear what I’d said and you were still hypnotized, that’s not a compulsion. I didn’t make you do anything last night. That’s not how hypnotism works. I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to.”

She looked down at her hands where she gripped her coffee mug. “I know,” she finally said. “I looked it up on the Internet. But…” She shook her head. “I would never, ever do that on my own.”

He looked at her. Truthfully, he believed her. The uptight executive across from him didn’t look as if she would crack a smile, much less scream while her legs were wrapped around his neck. But she had. So clear, she was capable of doing things that her corporate persona did not suggest.

She shifted again in her seat, obviously feeling excruciatingly uncomfortable. “I—” She took a deep breath and lifted her gaze to look him in the eye. “I remember everything from last night. I remember…” She swallowed. “I liked being under, Jimmy. I didn’t want to come out of it.”

He stared at her, trying to process what she was saying. Sure, he’d heard of people doing that. Of subjects so suggestible that they stayed hypnotized. But he’d never have pegged Nicky as one of them. She was too in control for that. But then again, maybe that was exactly the point. Maybe hypnosis was the only way she could let
her inner vixen out, so to speak. And once released, that part of her didn’t want to be caged up again. It sounded far-fetched to him, but then so did a lot of hypnosis stories he’d read.

“Like I said, even hypnotized, Nicky, I can’t make you do anything you didn’t want to.”

“What if it was the alcohol? Maybe I had a bad reaction to it. Maybe there was something in it that made me more susceptible or something.”

He frowned, stunned by the lengths she would go to preserve her illusion of…of what? Purity? Wholesomeness? Corporate mannequin? “Why is it so hard to believe that you just wanted to have sex with me?”

She flushed and toyed with her mug. “I’m just trying to make sense of this. I don’t do stuff like that. And then today…” She shook her head. “I couldn’t work. I couldn’t focus. I kept thinking about…stuff.”

Well, that made two of them. He didn’t get a damn thing done today either. But he didn’t get a chance to say that. The waitress arrived with their food, breaking the flow of the conversation. They ate in silence for a moment. Nicky was delicately efficient with her soup, of course. But he caught a glimpse of the vixen underneath when she took her first sip. Her eyes closed in delight and her mouth curved on a soft smile. It was another moment before she spoke.

“This is really good soup.”

He smiled, happy that he had brought her this simple pleasure. Happy, too, that she had relaxed enough to enjoy something so ordinary as good soup.

“You’re right,” she said. “Broccoli cheddar is my favorite.”

“You’re hard to forget, Nicky,” he said quietly.

She looked at him, her body shifting once again
beneath the table. But her eyes remained direct as if she had come to a decision. Then she spoke, her voice almost too quiet to hear, but he caught every word.

“This afternoon. When I thought you wouldn’t see me…when I planned to never see you again…” She tore off a piece of her bread bowl but didn’t eat it. “I had a…a panic attack.”

His gaze leaped to her face. She wasn’t looking at him, but he could see the way she bit her lip, then shifted into a self-conscious grimace.

“I’ve never admitted that before. That I have…episodes, you know.”

“Panic attacks?”

She flinched. “I call it industrial-sized heartburn.”

“But they’re not,” he pressed. “They—”

“Yeah, I know what they are,” she interrupted before he could name them again. Then her gaze rose to him. “I know why I have them. Pressure at work and all. Reports due, bad economy, yada yada. It’s hard, you know. And sometimes my body, you know, reacts.”

“Maybe your body, you know, is trying to tell you something,” he said smoothly.

She sighed. “I know that. And like I said, I know why I have them. Except for this last one. The one because of you.”

“Because you weren’t going to see me again?” he asked. The very idea hit him broadside. Nicky—this gorgeous, put-together, grown-up Nicky—had had a panic attack at the fear of
not
seeing him again. His ego just loved that! But that didn’t mean he was unaffected by her obvious distress. “What happened to you, Nicky? How did you go from star athlete and class president to…” How did he say this? “You weren’t wound so tight in high school.”

She smiled, but the expression was almost tragic. “Nothing happened, Jimmy. I just grew up. I’ve got school debts and a mortgage on my condo. My job is insane, but I can’t afford to quit. Not in this economy, and certainly not without another job lined up.” She pulled off another piece of her bread bowl but didn’t eat it. “I just need to get keep my nose to the grindstone for a little bit longer. Just through this patch and then I can breathe again.”

He looked at her and saw the dark smudges under her eyes, even covered by make up. Her shoulders were hunched and her breath was short. And she’d stopped eating in favor of toying with her food. She looked haunted or dogged or just plain exhausted.

“Nicky,” he said softly, “whatever the problem is, it goes way beyond last night.”

She shook her head, her expression defiant. “There is no problem. Not really. I just need to understand what happened so that I can go back to work.”

“I don’t have your answers.” But God, how he wished he did.

She set down her spoon and looked at him, her heart in her eyes. “I want you to do it to me again.”

He froze, his mind spasming with ideas that had no business being in his head. He’d gone from eating his meal to rock-hard and horny in less than a breath. “What?” he managed to gasp.

“Hypnotize me. Or unhypnotize me. Or whatever. Just put me under again and tell me to go back to work.”

He blinked, his disappointment keen. Not that he had really expected her to want him to repeat certain other activities, but still, that didn’t stop his dick from being frustrated. “Um, that’s the last thing I’d tell you to do. You’re exhausted, you have panic attacks and
you’re thinner than a runway model. Nicky, you need a vacation.”

“Just humor me, Jimmy.” Then she held up her hand before he could correct her. “Jim. Please. Put me under again and unsuggest—”

“That you share your fantasies with me?”

She flushed scarlet. The shift was startling. Who knew her face could get that red that fast?

“Yes,” she said softly.

He huffed, torn between his honest desire to help her and the sneaky, depraved thought that once Nicky the Vixen was released, all sorts of fun things could happen. Which was case and point for why he should not be the one hypnotizing. “Wouldn’t a trained professional be a better idea? I’m a stage act, but there are psychotherapists. Doctors who are trained with hypnosis.”

“No!” She shook her head so sharply, a lock of hair escaped from her bun. “It has to be you.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.” When he tried to make eye contact, she slurped her soup while avoiding his gaze.

“This isn’t a good idea,” he said over his dick’s loud objection.

She lifted her gaze. “It has to be you.” He opened his mouth to argue, but she held up her hand. “Please don’t ask me why. I don’t know. Just everything in me says it has to be you.”

“After everything that’s happened between us, what makes you think it would work a second time? You have to trust your hypnotist. I don’t think—”

“I trust you,” she said. The words were rushed, but they were absolute.

“But—”

“I trust you, Jimmy. I always have.”

He studied her face. For perhaps the first time today, she was absolutely still and not the statuelike, I’m-about-to-lose-it still. She was confident in what she said. In fact, looking at her now, he was forcibly reminded of the high school girl she’d once been. And maybe that was it. Maybe she needed a psychological return to prom night when he was the one who had saved her from her asshole date. Or maybe it was more complicated than that. He hadn’t a clue what was going on in her beautiful head. Either way, it didn’t matter. She’d come to him for help and he’d never been able to refuse her.