Page 77 of Hypnotized By Love

“Like what?”

“You could ask me to kiss you.”

When I’d been learning about the different types of hypnosis, I’d discovered that one of the reasons people responded to stage hypnosis was that the hypnotist gave them the words or actions to follow. When a stage hypnotist said, “Sleep,” they did it because the hypnotist suggested it and they had no reason not to.

So when Mason gave me those words, I found myself in that same spot, repeating them. “Will you kiss me?”

“No.” Then his mouth was on mine, so quickly I didn’t register it at first.

Laughing, I pushed at his shoulders to get him to stop. He didn’t let go of me, though. “You can’t say no and then do it anyway.”

“Can and did.”

“You’re disproving your point.”

“I’m not under hypnosis. I just can’t resist you. If you ask me to kiss you, I will, no questions asked.”

“Oh, there will be questions. Like, how dare you? And who do you think you are? And why are you doing that? Do I need to call the police?”

“We’ll see,” he said, kissing the tip of my nose. “I just sustained bodily injury to check on you. I think you owe me.”

“I didn’t let you burn up in a fire, so maybe it’s you who owes me.”

“There was no fire,” he countered.

“But there could have been a fire, in which case I basically saved your life, so yes, you owe me.”

“What do you want?”

The words were there, ready to be spoken.Go away and leave me alone.

But I didn’t say them.

I couldn’t.

“We can’t kiss,” I offered weakly, but he must have heard how much I didn’t mean it.

“But you’ve been kissing me.”

“It was a mistake.”

“That’s happened twice,” he reminded me.

I thought of Bridget saying Mason was the kind of mistake you would make five or six times, and she wasn’t wrong, because I very much wanted to screw up again.

He hugged me tightly to him and then spun in a half circle while falling onto my bed so that he took the brunt of the fall and I landed on top of him.

Had it been another guy, I might have worried that I was squishing him. But Mason was so solid and strong that it never even occurred to me.

Not to mention how much I liked being pressed against him like this.

“Whoops,” he said.

“That wasn’t an accident.”

“You’re right. But now that we’re here ... any suggestions for what we could be doing?”

“You could leave.”

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