Page 276 of Ashes of Sin and Stardust

Simon let me say my piece. He was quiet while I sat there on the floor, my fists buried in Killer’s fur. Killer looked up at me and licked my face when I started to cry.

“Maybe I should just get a dog. No more Doms, no more boyfriends. Just a dog. That’s a good idea. Can I have Killer?”

“No.”

“You can be my boyfriend.”

He laughed. “No.”

“Because I’m a problem? Because I’m horrible?” I snapped at him. God I was completely out of control, but I couldn’t stop. “Because I’m a piece of shit? I know, okay! I know I suck!”

He shook his head. “No, stupid. Because you’re in love with him, not me.”

I snapped my mouth shut, then shook my head. “No, he just made me think–”

“I’m sure he explained hypnosis to you before he did it. Right?”

“Yeah...” I thought back to the day he’d explained how it worked and sent me home with articles to read. “He said... he said it was just ‘suggestion.’” I rolled my eyes as I added air quotes.

“Exactly. Reuben can’t make you do anything or say anything, or feel anything that you don’t want, Sprite. Hypnosis isn’t like that. It just helps you bring down the barriers between what you say on the outside, and what you truly want on the inside.”

I looked down at my hands, tears falling into my lap and onto Killer. They made little dots of wetness on his back.

“Alice... If you feel like you love him, it’s becauseyou love him.”

I felt him sit back down beside me. He had poured himself another shot of whiskey and set it on the coffee table in front of us. He set his notebook back into his lap and began drawing again.

“But I don’t want to.”

He laughed. “Tough.”

“But what if it’s not really love,” I turned to him, sitting on my knees. “What if it’s just my emotions playing tricks on me because I finally feel safe, and I’m interpreting my safety and appreciation as love? He said that happens to the slave girls. And what if he’s suggesting things to me, or the hypnosis is making me more susceptible to believing those thoughts–”

“Alice.” He placed his pencil over my lips to silence me. “Do you want my advice? Or do you just want to talk until you feel better?”

I thought about it for a second, and then said, “I want your advice.”

“Go home. Tell him you don’t want to do hypnosis anymore. Give it a few months. See how you feel.”

It seemed so simple when he said it like that. Talk. Communicate. Renegotiate.

“But what if he uses the trigger!” My eyes filled with tears again. The thought intruded into my head of Reuben making me want to go down to the dungeon, of me agreeing to him locking a metal collar round my neck, of me willingly and happily signing a contract, of the whole thing happening again–

“Tell him you don’t want him to use the trigger anymore. Tell him it scared you, and right now, it’s a hard limit. If you tell him you don’t want to do it anymore, he won’t.”

“You don’t know that!” I shouted.

He paused, and looked at me. “Yeah, I do. Do you?”

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