"Well hey there, champ," Randi heard a man say, as she stumbled out of an unfamiliar bedroom into an unfamiliar apartment in an experience that had become a little too familiar. "You're looking kind of groggy there--you doing okay? I got some bacon and eggs going, some coffee in the pot if you're up for any of it." Randi half-expected the words--and the scent that accompanied them--to hit her with a wave of nausea, but she wasn't waking up with her usual agonizing hangover. Honestly, apart from being muzzy and confused and still half-asleep, she actually felt... pretty good.

"Um, uh, yeah, in a minute," she mumbled, shambling over to the kitchen island and slumping down on a stool with her head in her hands. There was no headache, which was a nice change--she must have hydrated like hell the night before--but she still couldn't shake the unreal, dreamlike sensation permeating everything. "Was I, um... did we....? I'm sorry, I don't really remember a lot of last night. I think I must have had too much to drink." She was pretty sure she wound up sleeping with him, though, whoever he was. Randi had managed to find her underwear scattered around her bed, pulling them on over her muscular tattooed body so she at least felt like she was wearing something, but her clothes had vanished in the chaos of the previous evening and that was another sentence she wished she wasn't used to.

The stranger smiled at her. "Actually, you didn't have anything to drink," he replied, scooping bacon and eggs out of the frying pan and onto a plate. "You'd just ordered your first round of shots when we got to talking, and I told you that you didn't need alcohol to get drunk--" He looked at her quizzically. "This isn't ringing any kind of bells for you? You don't remember anything that happened to you last night?" Randi opened her mouth to answer, pausing as she tried to recall exactly what the last lucid moment of the night was... and her jaw hung open as she realized she didn't quite know.

That was weird. Usually, she at least had a memory of the first couple of shots, the dancing and the drinking and the bad decisions, and it was somewhere around the time she was leaving the club for an afterparty with some dude who lived nearby that her recollections fell off a cliff. But this time, when she probed that gap in her mind for something to prompt her addled brain into reminding her what she did, she instead found this weird soft spot in her thoughts that felt... good. "I, uh, no, it's...." She blinked heavily, realizing her eyes had just rolled back into her head for a moment. "Nothing, sorry."

The man chuckled, reaching out and giving her pale, tattooed wrist a squeeze with hands that had seen a lot more sun than hers. "That's not as unusual as you might think," he said reassuringly. "My name's Lucas, and last night I hypnotized you to experience the effects of alcoholic intoxication. We just sort of tricked your brain into thinking you were drunk, and your subconscious mind must have decided that it was safe to forget the details of the experience when you woke up. It happens to a lot of people--you relax, your waking mind gets intensely focused on one thing, like pleasure or the sound of my voice, and everything else kind of fades away. How are you feeling now?"

Randi's fluttering eyes refocused, and she realized that she'd kind of drifted off again while Lucas was talking--it wasn't exactly like he was stirring a memory, but his little speech brought her back into some warm and familiar space inside her head that felt kind of like that luxuriant sensation of being just awake enough to know you were still asleep and you didn't need to wake up anytime soon. "I, uhh, a bit muzzy, I guess?" she murmured, wiping at the corner of her mouth and discovering to her astonishment that she'd left a tiny trickle of saliva there while she was zoning out and listening to Lucas.

Lucas nodded. "That's not unusual either," he explained, his voice still so calm and certain and reassuringly confident that Randi could feel herself swept along by its flow. "Last night you were so drowsy by the end of the evening, so sleepy and relaxed and deeply hypnotized, that I decided to just take you down and down and down into a warm, peaceful sleep." Randi noticed her eyes rolling back in her head again until only the whites showed, her eyelids fluttering and her vision becoming the narrowest band of sight as only the very glimmer of her pupils remained visible, and it took her a moment before she remembered how to open them properly again.

"Sometimes that just means you wake up still a little bit in trance," Lucas continued, as though he didn't even notice Randi's head drooping forward until her long black hair fell in front of her face like a veil. "I tell you what, how about we just drop you back down for a minute or two, and then count you up again so you'll wake up properly. Sound good?" Randi caught herself beginning to nod almost without even thinking about it, her groggy mind still so mazy and bewildered that she gratefully allowed Lucas to direct the conversation. It simply felt better to let someone else think for her.

"There's a good girl," Lucas cooed, reaching up to caress her cheek. Normally Randi's hackles would have risen at that particular term--she worked security for a record promoter, she lifted weights competitively, and she probably stood a good three inches taller than the man who was so casually patronizing her. But the strangeness of the situation, the lack of memory and context and any kind of real framework to fit the morning's experiences into, left Randi feeling strangely adrift and she found herself leaning into his touch even before he whispered, "Sleep for me."

Her body slumped sideways off the stool, but Lucas was there to guide her down into a kneeling position on the kitchen floor. "There we go, that's right, going nice and deep. You remember how this feels now, don't you, pretty girl?" Funnily enough, Randi did. Once she was relaxing into the intimate warmth of trance, Randi's mind easily and effortlessly drifted back to last night and the charming stranger who bumped into her on her way back from the bar and struck up a conversation with her that she couldn't quite seem to extricate herself from. He seemed to have an answer for everything, a smooth and steady patter Randi couldn't break into to excuse herself, and by the time he turned the subject to her round of shots she discovered she was answering his questions as if he was an old friend.

And yes, of course he'd offered to help her experience a nice strong buzz without any of the hangover the morning after, and naturally Randi had been a bit intrigued by the notion of guilt-free drinking. She'd agreed to try hypnosis out, even though in hindsight she realized she was already in a light trance simply from the way Lucas guided their conversation, and before she knew it they were back in a corner booth and her head was lolling forward and her eyes had slipped completely shut. "That's it, babe, just sink deeper and deeper for me now...." Lucas was still talking, but Randi wasn't really listening anymore.

He'd really done it, too. Randi had been on her share of benders--okay, maybe more than her share of benders the last few months or so since breaking up with Amy, but she hadn't missed any shifts or anything--and she found to her shock and amazement that her hypnotized mind could vividly bring the best parts of those evenings back to her with such intense and perfect clarity that she could actually feel the buzz inside her brain. All he needed to do was tap her forehead and she'd down another shot, and before she knew it she was sloppy drunk without even taking a sip of booze.

"There's no need to think anymore, no need to hold onto that weary mind--it can all slip away for me, just like last night." That was right--she really hadn't ever emerged from trance, had she? Randi remembered going deeper, she remembered getting so absolutely sloshed that she couldn't even stand without help, but she didn't actually remember waking up. He guided her out to his car and all the way back to his bedroom without ever once allowing her to wake up, and her judgment was so impaired by the imaginary liquor that it felt like the best idea in the world to go along with his instructions. She was so fucking horny for him by the time he got her undressed.

She was horny again, Randi realized. Something about the warm drifting pleasure, the descent into mindless bliss under Lucas's soft and seductive voice was making her clit throb and pulse harder and harder with every passing moment. "Deeply aroused, deeply hypnotized, simply letting my voice guide you into peace and pleasure while you feel that buzz again and your brain gets all nice and fuzzy for me. You're a little too drunk to think straight, Randi, and it's so lucky for you that I'm here to tell you what to do and say and believe, isn't it?" She nodded her head. Something warm and stiff rubbed against her cheek as she did.

"That's a good girl," Lucas purred, his voice thick with triumphant lust as he slid his cock into Randi's mouth and tangled his fingers into her hair to guide her up and down on his shaft. "It's so nice to be a good girl, it feels so good to be a good girl, and you don't really want to come back up just yet, do you? Not when you're so happy being buzzed and sleepy and turned on for me. You want to stay nice and relaxed and lost in my power." Randi didn't nod, not exactly, but the motion her head made felt like agreement and she didn't want to stop.

"You're going to keep sinking deeper, Randi, letting go of all those memories because the only thing that matters is pleasure. It feels nice to get your brain buzzed into that giggly stupor, it feels nice to fuck and suck and drift into hot sexy bliss for me, and because it's all so good and your boring old self might want to stop you from experiencing it, you're simply not going to let her remember what we do together so you can keep coming back to this space as often as you want. Isn't that right, sweetie pie?" Randi let out a muffled grunt around Lucas's cock. A tiny part of her warned her that she was making a big mistake, but Randi had gotten accustomed to ignoring that voice long before she met Lucas.

"That's a good girl," he growled, his voice getting husky with arousal as he began to thrust harder and harder into her open mouth. "That's my good girl, you want to be mine now because you know I can always give you all the pleasure you want whenever you're craving it, and you want to simply lose all those other thoughts and memories and focus yourself on the ecstasy of being owned...." Randi's resistance, ineffectual as it was, collapsed almost instantly at the notion of waking back up into a world of hurt and sorrow and loss. If she didn't wake up, she didn't need to think about Amy. She didn't need to think about anything. That alone made it easy to just sink deeper into a mindless obedient trance.

"G-good girl," Lucas gasped, pulling out of Randi's mouth before spinning her around and pushing her down until her face pressed against the linoleum. He yanked down her panties with an unseemly urgency and sank balls deep into her cunt, and even though Randi knew she wouldn't remember any of this when she woke up she understood that the deep and satisfying sensation of being penetrated and fucked and owned would leave her blissfully sated all the same. Deep down, she realized that this couldn't be any kind of healthy coping mechanism for her break-up... but compared to getting drunk every night, it at least came without a hangover. She came hard, clenching around his cock, and allowed her mind to drift down into a familiar oblivion for her new Master.

THE END