The Addicted Natural Ch. 12

I suppose I could subscribe to the old "phemerones" hypothesis. Maybe she gives off a particular scent that makes a man desperately want to hold her, and take her away from the sight of other men, and stroke her for the tactile reassurance that she's real, and selfishly protect her from all the things that he himself wants so desperately to do to her. But no, it couldn't just be a smell, because I could still feel those emotions just from the memory of her. Can a person "remember" a smell? Not like that. The smell most definitely wasn't here now, and I had an erection that was almost painful. No, it was something about the way she looked. And in that appearance, she was certainly different from Brenda and Dee.

And yet, she was certainly the same, too. The way she held herself. The way she smiled. The way she couldn't hold your eyes, and the way she'd blush and cast her own submissively downward. It was almost like an aura of some sort. And the way she'd stood next to the girls, the way she reacted to them, the way she looked at them (and they at her) lent a firm support to the concept of a sisterly bond of some sort.

I took a breath and returned to the present. "Let me get this straight," I said evenly. "She never mentioned hating her husband, or about not having had sex with him, but you still think these things because of some association you have with her."

"She never even mentioned her husband," Dee said.

"And we don't think it," Brenda stated firmly. "We KNOW it!" She let that sink in a moment. "She's a Natural, Freddy."

"Now, wait a minute!" I said defensively. "You're not suggesting ...."

"No. I'm only saying that we need to find her. We need to find her and HELP her!"

I sighed and leaned back in my chair. Logic dictated that this was not going to end well. But no one ever accused women of having an overabundance of logic.

"Okay," I said firmly, desperately trying to maintain some semblance of control. "I'll see what I can do about finding her. But neither of you is permitted to contact her or take any other action without my implicit direction, is that understood?"

They glanced at each other, smiled broadly, and nodded their concurrence.

"Now," I said, "what's her last name?"

They looked at each other again, helplessly this time, then back at me with blank expressions.

"You don't know?" More blank looks. "And you don't know which campsite they were in."

"She said she was in a trailer," Brenda said earnestly.

"But HE accused her of not staying in the TENT," I pointed out.

Dee was starting to cry. "We have to HELP her!" she wailed, and Brenda went to her and held her soothingly.

"Oh, Freddy, what are we going to do?"

I sat racking my brain, which was difficult since there was a crying woman in the room. My brain sort of derails when a woman cries. "Tell me about your conversation," I suggested. "What did you guys talk about?"

It wasn't a very big help, except that it allowed Dee to get her tears under control. They'd met Willie in the women's public bathroom, and then they'd coxed her back to our camp for glass of iced tea. They'd only been talking for fifteen or twenty minutes before I arrived, and their topics had ranged from albinism to the weather; but while the girls had mentioned me several times, Willie had never said anything about her husband.

Brenda had returned to her seat across from me, and Dee sat looking down at her folded hands for a long minute as I thought the situation out. She squirmed slightly, and frankly looked slightly guilty about something. Finally, in a meek voice, she said: "Rudy .... Her husband's name is Rudy."

I blinked at her, then looked across at Brenda, who was staring openly at our pregnant lover. "She never told us that," she said.

Dee shrugged without looking up. "Maybe she muttered it while we were ... fighting," Dee said. She took a breath and finally met my questioning gaze. "But that's it, I'm sure," she told me firmly. "His name is Rudy."

I decided not to question her on the point, though I frankly wasn't sure if I believed her or not. At least it was something. I chose to attack the problem on several fronts. I would go back to the campground Monday evening (I still had a job to contend with) and try to find a list of campers for the day in question; then I'd get another list of people who rented john boats from the marina. That, at least, would narrow the number of possibilities down below the entire population of the United States. Brenda would try to match the names Wilhelmina, Rudy, Rudolph (or any other derivation or the name) to any spouse abuse complaints within a hundred miles or so (a long shot, at best). And Dee would try to figure out which island Willie might be from by studying online maps.

The prospects did not seem very good.

THE NIGHT BEFORE THE BIG BANG

"Surrender and sleep!" I commanded. My wife immediately sagged back against the cushions of the couch, her hands at her sides, deep under the influence of her hypnotic trance, while Dee slumped across Brenda's lap, also in a profound sleep. I'd begun hypnotizing them together like this as an expedient. It saved time and energy on my part, and the girls oddly liked it better this way.

It also helped me set up the nightly sleeping arrangements. Usually, I left one of them in a trance, had her go into Dee's room, strip and get into bed, with instructions that when the grandfather clock in the hall struck two, she would leave her trance and slip into a natural sleep, full of pleasant dreams. I would awaken the remaining woman and allow her to show me her gratitude in the master bedroom. For while we engaged in a "threesome" once or twice a week, I found that I much preferred the company of only one intimate partner for the night.

I still hadn't been able to break Dee of the unconscious habit of sneaking into the big bedroom and curling up on the floor at the foot of the bed on the nights it was Brenda's "turn". She was definitely doing it while still in a trance, for she swore she had no knowledge of coming into the bedroom, and I believed her. Even deep hypnotic suggestions had little effect. I came to believe that this was the epitome of subservience in her mind, and that's why she did it. And while I normally let her indulge in her submissive feelings, I was beginning to worry about the affects of the hard, cold floor on her health, as well as the health of our unborn baby. She was less than three months away now.

But for two nights out of the last five, I chose to sleep alone, and I was going to do so again tonight. There was a lot on my mind, and I'd be staying up late again this evening. Major changes were taking place in my life (little did I realize just how much it would change in the next 24 hours!), and I had a lot of thinking to do. Normally, I would command each girl individually when in a trance, but I now decided on yet another expediency.

"You can hear only my voice," I commanded. "Where are you now?" Each of them answered that she was in her wonderful room, on her wonderful bed. "Who, in the whole world, is most important to you?" I asked.

"You are," they answered in unison.

"And who, in the whole world is the next most important?" And they immediately answered with each other's name. I smiled. Too easy. "Think about her now. Think about her kisses. Think about her caresses. The feel of her skin. Think about how you can make her feel, how you can make her move in response to your touch, how you can make her moan. Think about your love for each other. Think about your need, about your desire ... feel it ...."

They were beginning to move very subtly. Hips were twisting, dreamily; thrusting ever so slightly. Dee began making little noises in her throat. I left them like that and walked into my office for a few minute's work. I had taken on a summer class, and I was really suffering from burnout. In addition, the department had just circulated a memo asking non-tenured professors to consider cutting back to part-time. The state was in serious financial straits, and the state universities were viewed as a great place to start swinging the old cost-cutting axe. This just might be an opportunity for me. I didn't really need the money. Well, not REALLY. Not with Dee bringing in more than a million a year on top of the fortune she already had. But, I argued, that was DEE's money. I'd promised myself that I wouldn't touch it. But I had, of course. There was the truck, the boat. And I'd been "dipping" into her funds more and more lately, especially for pre-natal medical costs. Now, with the coming of the baby, she'd more or less convinced herself that she'd be my slave for life; my slave forever and ever. She would never need the money ....

I heard Brenda moan loudly. I smiled. Time to let them go. I went back into the living room, where they were both writhing on the couch in the midst of their individual hypnotic yearnings.

"Listen to my voice," I commanded. "Listen and obey. Do you feel your need for your sister-in-slavery?" They both moaned an affirmative. "Do you want her?" And again they both gasped an emphatic "Yes!" "When I awaken you, your desire will not slacken. Your need will consume you. You must have her. You must have her immediately. You will go into Dee's room, and there you will allow your passion to consume you. You will lie with her all night, holding her, loving her. Do you understand?"

"Yes!" in living stereo.

"Wake up."

And they popped upright, fully awake, fire in their eyes. At once, Dee sprang to her feet, grabbed Brenda's hand, and started pulling her in the direction of the door. Brenda hesitated, looking at me. "This isn't fair, Freddy!"

"I'll be fine, my dear. Off with you, now."

"We've done this two times this week already, Freddy. We should be pleasing YOU tonight!"

Dee was getting frantic. "COME ON, Brenda!" she begged, tugging desperately on my wife's arm. "Please!"

But Brenda wrenched herself free, ran to me, threw her arms around my neck and kissed me on the lips. "I love you, Freddy!"

"I love you, too," I told her. But Dee was back, pulling frantically on Brenda's arm again, and Brenda allowed herself to be extricated from my body.

"Thank you, Freddy!" she said over her shoulder as she sprinted from the room, hand in hand with her slave-sister-lover.

I smiled wanly and walked back to the office. "You're welcome," I muttered under my breath. I picked up the Part Time Enrollment form and started filling in the blocks. With only one class a week in the Fall Term, I'd have time to work on the novel, time to be with the girls, time to get ready for the baby, time to find Willie ....

She never seemed to be very far from my thoughts. It had been almost a week now, and I still couldn't shake the vision of the young (very young!) woman with the white hair. I'd finally discovered her last name: Wharton; but that very hard-to-find bit of information had proven to be no help at all so far.

At first, we'd learned that no "Wilhelmina" Anybody had filed domestic violence charges against a husband in any county in the state, at least so far as Brenda could determine from her sources in the police department, and that no complaint had ever been filed against anyone named Rudy (or Rudolph, or Rudyard) Wharton. But that wasn't too surprising for reasons already discussed. There were more than fifty very small islands dotting the South American coast below Barbados, between Kingstown and St. Gorges; so that, too, was of little help. I had gone back to the campground, but my entreaties for information from the campground manager had wound up becoming a full-fledged argument, and I left with no answers at all. Having learned my lesson, I withdrew five hundred dollars from the bank in hundred dollar bills, and armed with this ammunition, I returned the next day to the marina, where I begged the guy at the boat rental for assistance. Begging goes a long way when Mr. Franklin uses his influence (times five), and I got the name (though no first name was listed on the rental form). He'd paid for the boat rental in cash, so there wasn't a credit card number. There was a phone number, but I'd since found that it had been a phony; no such number existed. No amount of digging had produced any results. I'd even paid fifty bucks for one of those internet searches, but to no avail. We'd found a few hundred "Whartons" living in the United States in the on-line White Pages, but none of them matched the first name that Dee had insisted was his. And, of course, since the phone number had been a fake, it was highly probable that the name was, too.

Down the hall, Brenda was making her "coming noises." I smiled.

The girls had taken the news first with excitement and then discouragement, as the sole clue was discovered and then looked as if it might peter out. I'd had to reiterate my promise that I wouldn't give up the search. But things definitely didn't look good at this point. Oddly, in the past two days, both Brenda and Dee had lacked the level of urgency they'd had the day after "the attack." This might be a good sign, and it might not. If they were cooking something up by themselves, we could be in for some REAL trouble. I made a mental note to question them about this during our next hypnotic session.

I was really tired. I folded my hands across the employment form and rested my head on them.

I dreamed about Willie. And a tree. Was she climbing it? When I awoke in the middle of the night, I was in a panic. The dream faded too quickly for me to hold, but I knew it had been a bad one. She had seemed so real.

I had a massive hard on.

WILLIE AND THE TREE

I returned home about three the following afternoon. I taught for four hours on Thursdays, and the young men and women in that class were not my favorite students. Let's face it: no one WANTS to be in summer courses. I had dropped my application and letter on the dean's desk, expressing my desire for only one course during the fall semester. Though my two years toward tenure would be held in reserve until I began teaching full-time again, I somehow knew my career as a professor was over. I sighed as I pulled the Mercedes into our driveway. At least I had Friday off. A three-day weekend looked especially tantalizing.

The girls were outside, waiting for me. They were dressed much the same as they'd been six days ago; in shorts and t-shirts, Dee's stretched tightly over her protruding belly. They stood nervously beside the truck, which had obviously been packed again for another camping trip. Maxine was especially excited, bounding around, barking, whining to be let in the truck's back seat for the trip she knew was coming.

"What's all this about?" I demanded, getting wearily out of the car.

"We thought that we all needed a getaway," Brenda explained. She had a nervous expression. There was something she wasn't telling me. "We didn't get to spend the night last week. We owe Maxine a camping trip." She reached down and stroked the dog's head.

"The boat's still down at our marina," I said. "Why don't we go tomorrow morning? I'll have time to get it out and take it with us."

"We don't need the boat, Freddy. You can rent one, if you really want to go fishing later. We want to go camping today!" She couldn't seem to keep eye contact. Dee kept her eyes downcast, as well. She'd developed the habit of running her fingertips across her abdomen when she was nervous or thinking about something. "Please, Freddy," Brenda pleaded softly, finally looking me in the eye. "We want to go today! Please?"

"They're calling for a good chance of thunderstorms tonight."

"Please?"

"What's this all about, Brenda?"

"Don't ask, Freddy. Okay? We'll tell you tonight, after we're there. It's important to us."

"Is this about Willie? Have you been in contact with her? Are you going to meet her?"

"No." She looked back down at her feet again. "I mean ... no. I mean, it has something to do with her, but we haven't been in contact with her, and we aren't going to meet her. I don't think. I mean ...." She looked back up again, exasperated. "Oh, Freddy, please! Don't make me beg you! We NEED this!"

I held up my hands. "Okay, okay! I'll get ready, and we'll go camping!" I started walking toward the house, Maxine running circles around me, barking, urging haste.

The drive to the same campground was done mostly in silence. This was my fourth trip there that week (including my two fact-finding excursions), and it was almost two hours away. It was a warm day, and we had the windows rolled down, so conversation would have been difficult, anyway. Maxine kept going from one side of the back seat to the other, sticking her head out, seeing if the air was any different on opposing sides of the truck. When we got there, the campground wasn't as crowded as it had been the previous week, but of course that would be the case on a Thursday versus a Friday. Still, our choice campsite from the preceding trip was occupied, and I chose another one nearby that was more out in the open.

The girls told me they would set up camp, and I grabbed my favorite fly rod and walked down to the lake's edge, Maxine at my side. There is nothing as therapeutic as fly fishing; and an hour's effort, though producing only one perch (which I let go), was just what the doctor ordered. As I walked back to the campsite, the dog bounding all around me, I found that I had a much improved disposition and calmer nerves.

The campsite was in more or less good order when I got there. The tent was up, though the girls had missed a few tie points on the large alpine tent, an error I easily rectified. The air mattress was inflated and the sleeping bag was spread atop it. There was a fire going, and Dee had made foil packets containing ground beef, bacon, onions and sliced potatoes, which sizzled on the coals and smelled wonderful. I took out a folding shovel and dug a shallow trench around the tent, just in case the weatherman was right about those storms, which, with building cumulonimbus on the horizon, looked probable. I waited until the meal was almost over before broaching the subject of what had brought us here.

"We've been having dreams, Freddy," Brenda said as she cleaned up the table, throwing the paper plates and my empty beer bottle into a trash bag. Dee was quick to get me a second beer. I had just decided I'd like to have another, but hadn't yet asked.

"Dreams?"

"Dreams about Willie.

I looked toward Dee. "Both of you?"

"Yes," Dee answered. "But that's not the weird part."

"Weird part?"

Brenda took over again. "We have the same dream, Freddy. Each time it happens, we're always together, Dee and I, and when we wake up, we've found that we've had identical dreams. It only happens when we sleep together, but it's been three times this week. And we've always had the same dreams. I mean, they've been different dreams, each time, but we've dreamt them together. Does that make sense?"

"Yes," I said flatly, "it does. One of you has been talking in your sleep, and the other has the dream as she hears it." They looked dubious. "You are both very, very suggestible," I continued gently. "That's how I can hypnotize you so easily."

Brenda shook her head. "It's not like that at all. I KNOW when you've given me a suggestion during a trance. I can ... feel it. I never, ever fight it because ... well, because ... I like obeying you. I NEED to obey you. But I know when you've implanted a feeling in me. Like last night with Dee. I know that you made me have those feelings. But I always surrender to them. Always. Because it's what you want, and because ... because ... I like to surrender."

This was a bit of a revelation. I wasn't entirely sure I believed it, but I saw no reason to argue the point. "Okay," I said, "so YOU talked in your sleep, and it was Dee who heard and had a copycat dream."