Page 20 of Hypnotized By Love

Mason wasn’t moving.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Well, at least this proved he wasn’t faking it. He lay there like Sleeping Beauty, completely still and apparently unaware of the noisy commotion around him.

The fire alarm had never gone off in all the time I’d been renting this office space, and I wasn’t sure what that meant. Real or not? I wasn’t about to stick around and try to figure out whether it was a false alarm.

I needed to do a proper closure with Mason, but there was no time. And I couldn’t just leave him, because it would be bad if I let Mason get burned up.

Even lying backstabbers deserved better than that.

I stood and began to shake his shoulders, ignoring how big they felt under my hands. “Mason, you have to wake up. Mason.”

Still nothing. Since I’d never had a client enter that somnambulism state before, I didn’t know the right thing to do here. I knew eventually he would just wake up on his own, but we didn’t have time.

So I shook him harder. Maybe I’d get to slap him in order to wake him up. That idea cheered me up a bit. But then I thought I smelled smoke, and I wasn’t entirely sure if it was from a potential fire here atthe building or if I was still thinking of that dock memory that he’d conjured up.

“Mason! We have to go! There might be a fire!”

When I said the wordfire, his eyes opened quickly. He blinked at me a few times and seemed really disoriented. Another hypnosis patient might have come out of the session just fine without the awakening, but if Mason was as suggestible as he seemed and had gone as deep as I thought, this could be bad.

I needed to close out the session. But later.

“What’s going on?” He almost sounded drunk, his voice thick with confusion.

Tugging at his arm I said, “Let’s go. You have to get up. The fire alarm’s going off.” Now I was starting to feel a teensy bit panicked. If there was an actual fire, I had no idea where it was at or how bad things might be. We just had to get out of the building.

He was still groggy but managed to get to his feet. He leaned heavily against me as we walked toward the exit, and I cursed the fact that I was on the second floor. We had a rickety old elevator, but I wasn’t willing to chance it. Fortunately, the stairwell was clear and safe, and I helped him down each step.

There was a burning sensation where his side pressed against mine, and I didn’t know if it was from the fear that we might potentially be trapped in a fiery inferno of death, or if it was from being this close to him, touching him again. I swore under my breath. He really did smell amazing.

We made it to the street level and went out onto the sidewalk. Most of the other tenants were gathered there, and I heard the wailing of fire trucks headed toward us.

The building tenants weren’t the only ones standing around watching. Everybody nearby poured out onto the street to watch. A lone police officer, the first person to respond, was trying toherd us away from the building to make room for the incoming fire trucks.

I looked up and didn’t see any smoke, didn’t smell anything. I wondered if it actually was a false alarm.

Vivian, the interior designer who had an office on the third floor, said, “This is your fault, Moe! I told you to knock it off with that hot-plate nonsense.”

Moe was a nervous-looking man who worked as a pet therapist up on the fourth floor, and he was wringing his hands as he said, “I like to have tea, Vivian!”

“Then buy it from a barista like the rest of us!” she snapped back. She noticed me and Mason, and her annoyance turned into a smile. Vivian was new to town and had only been here for a few months. I had welcomed her to the building with a plate of cookies, and we’d been friendly ever since.

“Savannah! Who is this?” she asked. “A new client?”

How was I supposed to describe Mason to her? I couldn’t exactly say he was nothing more than a pain in my butt. “This is Mason. And I guess you could call him a client.”

My shoulders were being squeezed, and I noticed that Mason was smiling at me and sort of hugging me. I quickly stepped away from him. If Vivian noticed my unease, she didn’t say anything. She just smiled at him in that way that every woman under the age of forty seemed to smile at him. She said she’d see me later and then walked over to the officer across the street to ask a question.

“Feeling more awake?” I asked Mason, ignoring the aching feeling I had. As if my body were missing his warm touch.

“I am!” He sounded downright giddy. “Why are we outside?”

“Apparently there’s a fire, and the alarm went off. Our hypnosis session got interrupted. Hypnotic states range from light to really deep, and I think you went really deep.”

He raised both eyebrows at me playfully. “I don’t do anything halfway. What did you do in there? I feel amazing. Euphoric.”

Considering I hadn’t gotten to the part of the process where I would have told him that he’d wake up feeling refreshed and exhilarated, it was surprising. “I didn’t see any huntsmen bringing you the heart of your enemy, so I’m not sure why you’re so happy.”

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