A few days later, Lucy stood in front of her evening class, trying to explain the importance of affective counselling. It wasn’t going well. Part of the problem was organization: Lucy had spent a good hour preparing for class, but all but a few minutes had been spent on getting prettied up. It hardly mattered. Most of the class were more interested in Lucy’s curves than her course material.

“The focus of affective counselling is on feelings and emotions, the affective indicators of a person’s inner state,” she told the class. “As a counsellor, you have to work with your client’s feelings and help them take control of them. Does that like, make sense?”

She looked around the room. Most of the girls were in casual college-wear: sweatshirts and leggings or snug jeans. Why couldn’t Lucy dress like that? Her ‘friendly and approachable’ business suit was fuchsia, form-fitting and short. A crimson bustier beneath the jacket pushed her womanly breasts up and out. Fuchsia mesh tights and open-toed, sky-blue pumps openly invited everyone to stare at her legs. Every man in the room was accepting the invitation.

Why was she dressed like this for teaching? It was utterly inappropriate. Worse, why was she enjoying it so much? The avid stares of the guys, and (she was loathe to admit it) the disapproval and envy of the women, was turning her on. She flipped back her hair with one hand, deliberately making her enamel bangles clatter. Stop that! she scolded herself.

Lucy stumbled and bumbled her way through the lecture, persistently distracted. “The key features of affective counselling are: first, like, establishing rapport; second, uhm, avoiding judgement and . . . uhm, something else. Oh, right, remaining optimistic. About the client, I mean.” She felt very warm; all those hot guys staring at her!

Lucy had become a very interactive teacher: she strolled about the room as she spoke, walking slowly so the guys could get a good look. High heels turned her stride into a sexy strut. This isn’t right, she kept telling herself. God I’m turned on.

It was all Eugene’s fault. His pale-eyed suggestions were messing with her head. It was beyond reason that he could do this to her. She was a clinical psychologist with a Master’s degree and advanced training. She understood the workings of the human mind as well as anyone, at least from a practical perspective. There was no way that a few blunt sentences from a blank-faced minion should have wormed so deeply into her brain. Yet she had wasted more time before the lecture comparing lipstick shades than reviewing her PowerPoint slides.

Finally the leer-filled lecture came to a blessed end. “Are there any questions?” Lucy asked wearily, as the students rose to leave.

“Yes!” a male voice blurted. “Will you marry me?” Titters rippled through the class.

Lucy decided it was time to quash the sexual undercurrents. “Sorry honey, you’ll have to wait in line,” she replied, to more laughter. What? That was not at all what she should have said. She hastily gathered her papers and left the room.

A few minutes later Lucy was sitting in her car in the near-empty car park. Her notes and satchel were scattered on the seat beside her. She was horny as could be, of course. All those men staring at her all evening sent a thrill directly to her pussy. Her knickers were wet. She would have to hurry home to masturbate.

That was another new direction. In the past few weeks self-love had shifted from an occasional indulgence to a serious hobby. A round of hand play in the shower was as essential as coffee to start her day. She frequently went around again in the evening, especially if she had been out shopping, or anywhere that men could see her. If she went shopping on-line, where vampy outfits were more readily available, she generally got herself off at the same time. She had become adept at typing with one hand.

More and more she found herself fantasizing about exciting men with her sexy outfits, then satisfying them with her sexy body. Hard cocks became both the symbol of her attractiveness and the centre of her need. Her orgasms were powerful and plentiful. They tended to promote impulsive purchases.

The radio came on when she started the engine. It was tuned to a station playing restful jazz. The same station played at low volume through the sound system in Lucy’s office. Her hand reached out to change the station. She stopped herself. She would not do this.

Lucy had been finishing up for the day sometime the previous week when Eugene stepped into her office. He usually reminded her of the next day’s appointments. Abruptly he said, “Oh, and you should change the music too.”

“What now, Eugene,” Lucy replied. She was tired, and horny. She had been wearing high heels all day. She was looking forward to a glass of wine and a long soak in the tub. She would play with herself in the water, of course. She had discovered a cobbler who made pretty slides and mules entirely of plastic so she could wear them in the bath.

“The ambient music is all wrong,” Eugene explained, in his usual emotionless voice. “Jazz is pretentious and exclusive. Playing jazz in the office pointedly reminds everyone that they are less musically sophisticated than you are. It’s snobby.”

His face was expressionless. Lucy found herself searching those pale blue eyes, looking for inflection to replace that missing from his voice. She found nothing. She felt like a lost sailor, adrift in the Atlantic, vainly searching for some sign of land.

Lucy was in no mood to be lectured. “What difference does it make?” she demanded. “You can hardly hear it.”

“If you can hardly hear it, you can hear it,” Eugene rejoined. “It would be better to play more popular music that would help your clients feel at home.”

“Popular music? Isn’t that code for top-forty trash?”

“Here’s a service you should try,” he replied, unperturbed. “They stream commercial-free.” He handed her a slip of paper. He left the room.

I should sack that man, Lucy reflected, when she was alone. Why was he still working for her? It’s those eyes, she decided. They always threw her off kilter; something about the pallid blankness of those pale blue eyes demanded that she look into them, forever searching for the vitality one ordinarily found there. It distracted her from objecting to his objectionable suggestions. She shook her head. Time to go home.

Eventually Lucy decided to see what Eugene branded as more popular music. She tuned in the streaming channel on her home sound system while she enjoyed a glass of Chardonnay in the bath. It was worse than she expected. The channel played an endless babble of bubble-gum pop aimed at boy-crazy fifteen-year-olds. There was certainly nothing pretentious about this music. It was all teenage heart-throbs and yearning, to a dance-able beat.

Nevertheless, the vapid tunes kept her company through her whole glass of wine, and a lovely, finger-fuelled orgasm. Inspired by the music, she imagined herself back in high school, flouncing about in an absurdly brief uniform that didn’t quite cover her knickers, then sucking off a stern teacher to ensure a good grade. That first glass of wine went down so well, Lucy decided to have another. This time she added stiletto heels to her school kit and fantasized about seducing the headmaster.

Lying in the warm tub, coming down from her second climax, Lucy wondered where these bizarre fantasies kept coming from. By that point she was too sated, drunk and relaxed to worry about it. She slept well that night. She forgot to turn the music off.

Now though, sitting in her car in the university car park, Lucy fought back. She wasn’t going to stew her brain in more of that adolescent nonsense, no matter how catchy the tunes were. Her car had automatically synced with the streaming channel on her mobile. (Why was it on her phone? When had she done that?) All she had to do was touch one button. But she wasn’t going to do that. She liked jazz. Jazz was music for grown-ups. She was a grown-up woman, not a giggling teen wearing candy-striped knee-socks. She would not be manipulated like this. She put the car in gear and drove home.

She made it half a dozen blocks. She stopped at a traffic light. The dashboard display was still showing music options. Lucy gripped the steering wheel. She was not going to succumb to this weird impulse. No!

The light changed. Lucy made a rude exclamation of frustration. She jabbed the touch-screen. Soft woodwinds disappeared, replaced by a bouncy dance tune about swooning over boys. Lucy accelerated across the intersection. She listened to the music. Her underthings were moistening beneath her short, fuchsia skirt.

There was a client waiting in the outer office, but Lucy was ignoring her. She was in her private office, pacing back and forth, deeply worried. Her practice was spinning out of control. She was losing clients. She was losing referrals. She was losing her mind.

She looked down at herself. This is not the way a clinical psychologist dressed. Today she was wearing a V-necked, red pullover matched with a red vinyl miniskirt. Her high-gloss stockings had red flowers embedded in them. Ridiculous platform booties in soft micro-suede, red on top, pure white underneath. This sort of audacity had become her standard work attire.

Lucy’s wedge heels sank into deep carpet. Her office had new carpets throughout. That had been Eugene’s idea. He said the office needed a make-over, to be less clinical, more welcoming. The old rugs had been standard grey and tan. Eugene’s replacement was a feminine dusty-rose colour. To Lucy it looked distressingly close to pink. She had signed the purchase order.

This had to stop. She had to get rid of Eugene, one way or another. He was doing something to her, sneaking into her head with that bland voice and those dim blue eyes. She stopped in front of a full-length mirror mounted on one wall. The mirror was new too.

She inspected herself. She looked utterly wrong for a counsellor at work, totally right for a hot club after dark. And while she was appalled that she was wearing this get-up to the office, vanity reminded her that she looked super-sexy. She attracted male attention everywhere she went. Her make-up was subtle but exact, highlighting her eyes. Her hair was carefully shaped around her face. She had sat in a hair-dresser’s chair for two hours while the woman added highlights and frosted the tips.

This was insane. She leaned forward, brushing a few errant hairs back in place. These days she found it virtually impossible to pass a mirror, or indeed any reflective surface, without preening. There were four mirrors in her office.

She hip-swayed back to her desk to retrieve her wine glass. Her office served free wine now. That had been Eugene’s idea too. He said that wine would help her clients relax while fostering the welcoming, non-judgmental atmosphere her practice needed. Lucy nixed that idea straight away. Plying clients with alcohol before a counselling session was wildly inappropriate, clearly unethical and probably illegal.

Yet somehow Eugene had persuaded her to give it a go. He presented the idea in the same lifeless voice he used to discuss carpets. How could he be so persuasive? Eugene was so bland she could forget he was in the room even while he was talking to her.

Lucy bought wine by the case now. She stocked white, red and pink, so there was always a choice. A glass-fronted wine fridge hogged the waiting room. The conversations about carpets and wine had both emerged when Lucy called Eugene into her office to sack him.

Eugene was right about the disinhibiting effects of the wine. Women who came in with a half-empty glass in one hand were happy to chat. The glass was always empty when they left. Somehow Eugene persuaded just about everyone to have a drink, even those that didn’t care for wine, and even in the morning. Sometimes Lucy joined them. She was generally half sloshed by the end of the day.

I’ve got to fight this, she told herself again. Eugene was trying to make her over into a tippling, over-sexed lovedoll. It wasn’t going to work, she was going to put a stop to it. She wasn’t going to let that pale-eyed nobody transform her into a boozy bimbo.

The past few weeks had been endlessly confusing. Despite her resolve to maintain decorum, Lucy had become increasingly obsessed with her appearance, always ensuring that she looked carefree, feminine, and (especially) sexy. She wasted hours in front of her bedroom mirror. Her closets bulged with fun-coloured bimbo fashions, all of them field-tested for horny male approval. Aware that her legs were her best feature, she favoured micro-miniskirts, skimpy shorts and lycra tights as thin as varnish. Most of her expensive wardrobe of professional clothes had landed in the charity boxes. She couldn’t bring herself to wear any of it and she needed the closet space.

It was becoming increasingly difficult to leave her house, even for a few minutes, without dressing up first. She weeded the front garden in spandex shorts and high-high heels. A few days earlier she had spent most of an hour fussing over what to wear to the chemist to pick up a prescription. She kept trying to stop, to get herself under control, but the thought of how men – and their precious, cunt-thrilling cocks – would react to her latest outfit overwhelmed her every time.

Her evening lectures were becoming vaudeville. As her wardrobe shifted from sensible to sexy to shameless, male attendance had become more and more devoted. There were guys in the classroom now who weren’t even taking her course.

The previous evening she had come to class in a bodycon micro-dress of sunshine yellow, and, perhaps inspired by her youthful new taste in music, white platform running shoes. She bounced around the auditorium, tipsy and tempting, treating the class to flashes of her black-and-yellow stocking-tops with every step. Bending over revealed a slice of yellow lace knickers like a new moon on a summer night. She bent over a lot.

By the time the class was done she was so worked up from all the gaping guys she couldn’t even wait to get home to jill off. Instead she fingered herself to a yummy climax in the ladies’. She was certain by now that she was going to seduce one of her students, or maybe five, before the term was over. She had seen several hard-ons right in class.

This had to stop. If she didn’t get her life under control she would lose all her clients, and possibly her licence. It all started with Eugene. He was the root of the problem, the ultimate source of all this madness. He had to go. She turned away from the mirror, resisting the urge to refresh her lipstick. She opened the door to the waiting room. “Eugene,” she said, “Come in here please.”

Fifteen minutes later Lucy flopped back down in her office chair. She stared ahead blankly. What had just happened? Why hadn’t she sacked Eugene? The conversation had not gone at all as she had planned.

Eugene had been calm, as he always was. He made no comment as she laid out her case against him. He replied that he understood her concerns, though he wasn’t nearly as worried about her practice as she was. In fact, he suggested that she worried too much in general. “You should relax a little bit,” he intoned. “Take life a little easier. Try not to get all worked up about the little dips in your days you can’t do anything about. Take life as it comes, instead of wallowing in the negativity of the nightly news.”

He spoke, of course, as if he were making suggestions for sandwiches. If Eugene were to give his team a rousing speech before the big game, the players would all go home. Yet Lucy had slipped into searching those dim blue eyes without even noticing she was doing it. “No, wait, wait,” she said, confused, “that’s not what – ”

“Consider adopting a more light-hearted attitude,” Eugene interrupted smoothly. “Find something to smile about every day. Let go a little bit and allow yourself to enjoy life. You would feel less stressed, and your clients would benefit as well. You want your clients to be happy, right?”

Lucy’s head was spinning. “Uhm, right?” she ventured. Happy clients sounded like a good thing.

Eugene nodded. “I’ll send in Mrs. Erskine,” he said. He disappeared from the office like an idle thought.

Now Lucy was sitting at her desk, bewildered. Eugene made adopting a whole new mind-set sound as simple as adopting a puppy. No one could become happy-go-lucky by flipping a switch. She drank wine. Unexpectedly, she giggled. Then she giggled again. She had no idea why she was giggling, but it was fun. Giggling made her tits bounce. Her bouncing titties made her giggle. She sipped her wine and bounced and giggled. She was still sipping, and giggling, when Mrs. Erskine walked in.

About a fortnight later, Lucy was back behind her desk, taking a break between clients. She had more free time now because clients kept cancelling. She should have been worried. Her practice was collapsing. But Eugene told her not to worry about it so she didn’t. Or if she was worried she simply drank wine and giggled until the worry went away.

Lucy leaned back in her high-backed chair. The sound system was playing bouncy K-pop nonsense by some manufactured boy-band Lucy adored. The latest issues of several professional journals lay in a stack on her desk, unread. A glossy fashion magazine was lying on top of them.

She plopped her feet on her desk so she could admire her legs. Those legs were fully displayed by her short dress and nude Wolford stockings. Chalcedony jewellery complemented the rich purple of her one-strap, form-fitting minidress. The spike-heeled, red ankle boots on her feet glistened like ripe cherries after a rain.

Of course this was no way for a professional to dress to the office. This was no way for a sensible person to dress anywhere. Lucy had pretty much given up fighting the compulsion to dress for male attention everywhere she went. It was too much fun watching their eyes light up with desire as she wiggled by in her clingy minis or short-shorts and high heels. She had started dressing that way for church. Lucy wasn’t even religious particularly, but it was such a turn on to sit in a front pew and watch the preacher lose his place every time she crossed her knees.

Turning men on turned her on. Tempting and teasing virile men always made her horny. The men who came to her office with their partners made her horny. Admiring her own reflection made her horny. Was it any wonder that she spent so much time on her back, pleasuring herself with her fingers or her swelling collection of kinky toys?

She closed her eyes, day-dreaming about showing off for hard-membered men. She ran both hands down her flanks, then down onto her nylon-coated legs. Maybe she shouldn’t have had that second glass of wine. She slipped a finger tentatively under her dress, past her purple-lace bikini panties and into her forever-needy honeypot. She made a mewing sound. Lucy hadn’t expected that being a shameless bimbo-tart would feel so delicious.

She glanced at the clock on the far wall. She had only one more client scheduled that day, who was probably going to ghost anyway. The comely counsellor spread her legs a little wider. She ran one purple-glossed nail along the length of her labia. A little “oooh” sound escaped her. Time for some self-love to tame the hornies for a while.

She was barely started, however, when someone knocked. The door opened and Eugene walked in. “Genie! I was busy!” Lucy whined. She quickly set her boots back on the floor and straightened her dress.

“Sorry to interrupt,” he said in his colourless voice. “I think your last client today is a no-show.”

Lucy only giggled. “Of course she is. Why would she take counselling with me? You’ve turned me into a total bimbo.” She tried not to stare at his pale blue eyes.

Her assistant almost managed to look offended. “Bimbo? Of course not. I made a few suggestions to help you relate to your client base. And perhaps let you relax a little.”

Lucy giggled again. “This is not normal. You have like, done something to me. To my head.” She paused for a beat as a new thought occurred to her. “Genie,” she said carefully, “when you were with the Downing Institute, you weren’t an employee, were you. You were a patient.”

It was rare for Eugene’s face to betray emotion. “Well, uhm, that. I volunteered for some uhm, experimental treatments for my agoraphobia. The results were, how should we say, highly unexpected. Uncloaked certain latent mental capacities. Eventually the researchers agreed to let me go if I promised not to talk about it.”

“That’s how you screwed up my mind. You screwed up my practice too. My clients are all deserting me.” She tried to sound offended. A giggle slipped out.

“Perhaps it’s time to shift to a more promising demographic,” Eugene replied. “To begin, you have a new client waiting outside.”

Lucy sat up. “A new client? I haven’t had anyone new in months.”

Eugene said, “Her name is Talia. She is the second wife of a successful investment banker. She is something different from your usual clientele. Take a look.” He handed Lucy his mobile. There was a picture on the screen, snapped in the waiting room. It showed a strikingly attractive blonde in a short, high-fashion dress and heeled sandals.

“Talia is very well off,” Eugene continued. “Note the diamond earrings. Her husband cares for her but they have little in common. She has come to you for counselling.”

Lucy frowned. “What’s her problem?”

“It doesn’t matter. What she really wants is for someone to listen to her, to make her feel important, to take her quotidian problems seriously and pretend they are significant.”

“But . . . why is she coming to see me.”

“Because she thinks you understand her. Look at the way she is dressed. She sees you as a fellow spirit, someone who understands the fun of dressing up and looking hot and flirting with her husband’s friends and ensuring her nail polish matches her shoes.”

“But – ”

“Ms. Lecutek, Talia is the doorway to a new and better clientele. She will pour out her problems to you over a glass of Cabernet. She will think you are a godsend. She will come back regularly. She will tell all her friends in the trophy wives club, and they will all come to you too, along with their spoiled daughters, their divorced friends and their champagne-swilling partners at the tennis club. Your practice will flourish. You can triple your rates. You’ll have a waiting list three pages long. None of these rich socialites care whether your counselling is effective as long as you remember to compliment their designer handbags. No one can relate to a bimbo as well as another bimbo.”

Of course Eugene related all this preposterous information as if he were reading a train schedule. Lucy found herself gazing at him, searching endlessly for any emotion in those dim blue eyes. Even his pupils seemed washed out.

Eventually she said, “What . . . what do you get from all this?”

“A salary commensurate with the success of your practice. And certain fringe benefits.”

“Fringe . . . benefits?” What was it about those empty blue eyes?

For answer he unzipped his trousers and exposed his manhood. Lucy was about to say something. Her jaw dropped instead. One part of Eugene was definitely not ordinary.

Still, she managed to be shocked. “Genie – Eugene! What are you doing! Put that . . . you can’t just . . . we’re in my office!” She was still staring at his manhood. He was already half-erect, perhaps just from being around Lucy.

“Think of it as professional development,” Eugene said. “A good bimbo knows how to tease on the streets and please in the sheets. Feel free to give yourself a little practice. I’m sure you have been thinking about it.”

Lucy was bewildered. This was still all wrong. She should have been outraged beyond measure. Yet Eugene was right. She had been thinking about cocks, more or less all the time, for the past weeks. Men and their wondrous love-shafts were always at the back of her mind, and frequently at the front. And now here was a real cock, jumbo-size and rising, mere feet in front of her dazzled eyes.

It was all too much. Lucy felt the last of her self-control fly away like leaves in the wind. There were all sorts of reasons why she shouldn’t be calmly accepting her assistant exposing himself, but at that instant Lucy couldn’t remember any of them. If only she could find some part of her mind that hadn’t permanently emmigrated to bimbo-land. Resisting was too hard, especially when she was horny, and turned on, and helplessly distracted by the emblem of manhood dangling in front of her.

Still staring, she climbed to her feet and stumbled toward him in her five-inch heels. “Genie!” she gushed, “I need – I mean, you’re . . . ohmygod.” She licked her lips. “You’re all . . . stiff . . . and like, tense.”

She sank to her knees in front of him in her figure-hugging mini-dress. She stroked his erection with one hand, exploring the size of it. Her bracelets sparkled. “This is like, therapy,” she agreed. “I need to practice.” Then she leaned forward and slipped him in.

Mmmmm, I was made to suck cock, Lucy purred as she felt his stiffness fill her mouth. I’m going to be doing a lot more of this from now. But after a minute she slipped her lips free. Her hand kept stroking. “Genie, what about Talia? She’s still waiting outside.” She gave his cock a long, loving lick.

“I told her you were extremely busy,” Eugene replied, “The longer you make her wait, the more grateful she’ll be that you can squeeze her in.” He was actually grinning.

Lucy giggled. She returned to the matter at hand. I’m a super-sexy sex therapist, she thought contentedly, as her red-glossed lips slid up and down her assistant’s shaft. I’m a cock-crazy counsellor, a bimbo for the bimbos. That is so effing hot. She slipped her free hand up under the hem of her too-short dress and into her slick-wet pussy. Still sucking, and licking, and finger-fucking, she closed her eyes and lost herself in an endless ocean of dim blue eyes.