Under His Spell. Kathy Lyons

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