"Resistance"

	Savannah almost got away with it. She had timed her visit to Loralee's lab with almost military precision, aiming for the narrow window when their respective lunch hours overlapped so that she could hit the supply closet while Loralee was still in the cafeteria. She'd taken a circuitous route specifically to avoid accidentally bumping into Loralee and letting her destination slip out during one of Loralee's aggressively friendly conversations. She had raced down the hallways as fast as her long legs could carry her, unlocked the door with the security badge she'd been holding nervously the entire time to make sure she didn't lose precious time trying to double back for it, jinked around the clutter that always surrounded Loralee's workbench, and made it to the supply closet with minutes to spare.
	Now she needed to remember what the hell she needed down here before Loralee got back. Crap.
	She rummaged frantically through spools of copper wire and spare soldering guns. It wasn't that she was disliked Loralee--in a lot of ways, it was impossible to actually dislike Loralee. The friendly Caucasian woman with the long ash-blonde hair had never been anything but kind to Savannah, treating her with an open warmth that sustained Savannah during that first year at the company when it seemed like they would never accept a black woman in a STEM position. And Savannah didn't want to repay that with nervousness, or hostility. It was just that...Savannah grimaced, turning a skeptical eye on her own motives and not liking what she saw very much at all.
	Savannah leaned over and grabbed a packet of connector pins. They weren't what she was looking for, and she rattled them as if she was trying to shake something loose inside her own head. She knew she had to get moving soon; if she spent any more time woolgathering, Loralee would find her here and that would lead to another one of those conversations that felt awkward despite Loralee's constant, unrelenting friendliness.
	Or perhaps because of it. Savannah hated second-guessing every sentence, going over every touch and every glance in her head to try to figure out whether it was something more than innocent affection. It wasn't Loralee's fault that she was gay and Savannah wasn't, but Savannah couldn't help it--ever since she found out that Loralee was a lesbian, she'd been certain that there was more than just friendship behind all those smiles. She tried to tell herself not to be uncomfortable, that Loralee hadn't changed, but--
	"Hey, Savannah!" Loralee walked into the lab, letting the door swing shut behind her with a booming clang. Savannah stood up bolt upright so quickly she almost overbalanced into a pile of circuit boards, and the packet of connector pins went flying out of her hands as she pinwheeled in an attempt to keep her balance. "What brings you down to--whoa, careful there!" Loralee darted across the room, grabbing Savannah's wrist to keep her from falling over.
	Savannah steadied herself, aware that she had just done a wonderful impression of the Wacky Neighbor character in a bad sitcom, and brushed a few curls of dark hair out of her eyes that had gone astray during the near tumble. "Um, thanks," she mumbled, gesturing with her free hand to the supply closet. "Um, I was just down here to, um, get some...stuff." She felt the heat of a blush under her mahogany skin, grateful that it didn't show; she sounded like a complete idiot, she didn't need to look like one as well.
	If Loralee noticed her embarrassment, she didn't let on. "Well, I'm glad you're here!" she said, dragging Savannah over to her workbench. "I'm having problems with a circuit design, and I was really hoping you could help me!" Savannah wanted to pull free and make a run for it, but social pressure trapped her in the room more thoroughly than any lock ever could. It would hurt Loralee terribly if she thought that Savannah didn't like her, and the last thing Savannah wanted to do was make her colleague feel bad.
	Loralee rummaged around in a pile of components, finally unearthing a massive circuit board with a tracery of copper wire soldered to it. The tangle of circuitry was so ludicrously complex that it made Savannah's eyes water just looking at it, and she couldn't even imagine what it could possibly be used for, let alone how it could work. It looked like plugging it in would start a fire that you could see from space. "That's, um...interesting," she mumbled, hoping that Loralee would respond by setting it aside with a laugh and hunting for the thing she was actually looking for.
	No such luck. "It is nice, but I'm having a hell of a time calculating the resistance. See, if I plug in a power supply here," Loralee said, tapping a spot on the corner of the board, " I know it's going to flow down through here, and then around past this spot, and if you just keep following my finger you'll see that it's quite complicated, so let me know if your eyes lose their focus as you keep watching me trace the shining circuit down and around and around and down and--"
	"Whoa, whoa, wait a second!" Savannah said, jerking her eyes up to meet Loralee's excited stare. She blinked heavily, feeling strangely dizzy from listening to the older woman's soothing, steady voice. "You weren't trying to, um...to hypnotize me, were you? Because I, I thought we talked about that." Savannah felt like she was being absurdly rude, jumping to the worst possible conclusion about Loralee just because Loralee had mentioned once or twice in the distant past that she used to study hypnosis. It was a hobby, it didn't mean she had any kind of, of sinister schemes to brainwash Savannah into a lesbian sex slave or anything. That was absurd, homophobic bullshit and Savannah was ashamed of herself for giving in to it even for a moment.
	Loralee didn't mind, though. She just laughed musically and patted Savannah's arm with a familiarity that caught Savannah by surprise. "Of course we did!" Loralee said, her voice almost condescendingly amused. "And there's absolutely nothing to worry about, remember? Hypnosis isn't a magic spell or anything, dear. You can always resist, any time you want to. Isn't that right?"
	Savannah forced herself to relax a little, letting down her imaginary hackles and reminding her that this was just an old friend of hers from work. There was nothing funny going on here. That would be absurd. "Of course," she said, trying to inject a note of calm into her voice. "I can always resist."
	"Exactly," Loralee said, putting her finger back onto the board, back at the beginning where the electricity flowed in. "It's just like this circuit, really. Your mind is a little more complex, of course, but the same principle applies, doesn't it? No matter how much energy I put into it, there's always some resistance, isn't there?"
	Savannah nodded, watching Loralee's carefully-trimmed nails trace along the path of the delicate copper wire. She remembered now. Loralee had explained it once to her, during the same conversation they had where she told Savannah she was a hypnotist. Savannah recalled being nervous in that exact same way, but Loralee had reassured her expertly with her engineering analogies. "Yes," she said, hearing herself finally sounding comfortable and at ease. "There's always resistance when your words go into my brain."
	Out of the corner of her eye, Savannah saw Loralee nodding like a teacher with a particularly diligent student. "That's right," she said, her finger smoothly following the complex angles and elegant lines of the circuit. "Only..." Her voice trailed off into a worried silence, broken only by the slight scrape of her skin against the green plastic surface. "Oh dear. If your brain is like a circuit, then what does all that resistance do?"
	Savannah tried not to think about it. She tried to ignore the question, focus all her attention on Loralee's hand as it carefully delineated the path of the copper wiring so that she didn't have to answer. But the more she focused on Loralee's finger, the more she had to resist going into hypnosis while she watched it gently move around the shining, shimmering metal maze. And the more she worked at resisting hypnosis, the more aware she became of the answer to Loralee's question. Because there was an answer, she knew. She had spent years building her own custom electronic devices. She was all too aware of what happened when there was too much resistance in a circuit. And if her brain was a circuit, and it was resisting...
	"Well, dear?" Loralee said, her voice patient but firm. "What does that resistance do?"
	Savannah squirmed on the bench, her hidden blush intensifying as she struggled to control her body's inevitable response. But every passing second made it harder and harder to ignore, and Loralee's question hung in the air, teasing her until she finally couldn't help answering it. "Hhhh...heat," she whispered, hearing just a tiny bit of unsteadiness in her voice. "The more resistance there is, the greater the heat." Her shoulders sagged, as though on some level the admission had left her defeated.
	"That's it exactly!" Loralee said, remorselessly running her finger over the circuit board with a slow, steady, inexorable pace. "The more resistance there is, the more that heat builds up. You understand perfectly, Savannah. And because you understand so well, you can always resist my hypnosis, can't you?" Her hand kept moving, as if it was drawing the patterns of gleaming copper on the inside of Savannah's mind. It just kept going, she realized with a tiny, strangled whimper. It didn't stop, and...
	Oh god. She shifted on the bench again, desperately trying not to rub her thighs together. Resistance was proportionate to length. It was a basic rule of engineering, as fundamental and obvious as Faraday's Law. The longer Savannah watched, the longer she resisted. The longer she resisted...oh god. Oh god. She stared at the moving finger with magnetic intensity, desperately trying not to think about the way her body felt flushed and feverish with arousal. Because she couldn't let herself think about it.
	Because if she thought about it, she'd have to admit that it was Loralee making her feel this way. It was Loralee's words, Loralee's finger, Loralee's sensual hypnotic voice pouring into her like electricity into a circuit that made her so horny. And Savannah was straight, she knew she was straight. She couldn't be this turned on by another woman. She couldn't let Loralee make her this hot. "Yes," she whispered helplessly, unable to deny the silent pressure to respond. "I can always resist your hypnosis."
	Loralee slid a little closer to her on the bench, and Savannah's pulse quickened as she felt the other woman's thigh pressing against hers. "That's right, pretty girl," she cooed into Savannah's ear. "But of course, you have to be careful, don't you? Too much resistance, too much heat, and you just...melt. All that heat turns into an overwhelming, liquid rush and before you even know it, you've melted for me. Isn't that right?"
	Savannah heard her heartbeat pounding in her ears, a steady drumbeat that echoed in her clit with a throb of aching bliss. But she couldn't give in to her desire, she couldn't just...she tried to cut off the treacherous thought there, but her mind supplied her with ample images to fill the gap. Loralee's lips pressing softly against her own, insistently kissing her with tender warmth. Loralee's hands cupping her tits, finding her nipples and flicking them until they stood up as stiff as pencil erasers. Loralee's fingers sliding between her legs, under her clothing, into the sticky mess of her pussy. Loralee nodding eagerly as Savannah came hard against her rubbing hand. "Yes," she said in a vacant monotone. "The heat...the heat makes me melt for you."
	Loralee's lips brushed against Savannah's ear, and her breath was warm and sensual against Savannah's skin. "There's only one way to escape, isn't there? There's only one way to stop yourself from becoming so hot that you melt into helpless, malleable, liquid desire." Savannah shuddered, the words calling to mind memories that seemed impossible. Memories of struggling to resist Loralee's voice until the heat proved too powerful, and she growled in mindless lust as she melted in arousal and let Loralee take her over and over and over again until her mind simply exploded with the pleasure of it. Memories of relaxing her resistance, giving in to Loralee's hypnosis and letting herself sink into inexorable, blissful control. There was no way out, not really. Her brain either overloaded or shut down. Either way, she belonged to Loralee.
	The more she relaxed now, accepting the inevitability of her surrender, the easier the memories flowed for her. She recalled staring at the circuit board with empty, vacant eyes, absorbing Loralee's words with blank and eager acceptance. She remembered that she only remembered when she needed to remember, when it was time to respond to her programming and return to be programmed some more. It all came back to her in a rush of erotic bliss, a liquid thrill that finally defeated her struggles once and for all.
	Loralee must have seen it on her face, because she pressed Savannah again with a question. "How do you escape?" she said, her voice carrying a tone of pure command. No, Savannah realized distantly. Not even command. Commands could be disobeyed, but Loralee's words were simply a path that Savannah's thoughts flowed down like a stream of electrons. Once the circuit was complete, there was only one possible way things could end.
	"I stop resisting," Savannah said with a lazy sigh, sagging into the other woman's arms. Her hand moved helplessly down to her pussy, rubbing mindlessly as she finally gave in to the heat that was too strong, too powerful to escape. "I...stop, nhhh, stop resisting Loralee!" Her voice cracked under the strain of her arousal, becoming a desperate moan as she gasped out her lover's name.
	"That's right, pet," Loralee said, releasing the circuit board and allowing her fingers to trace other places. "You're nearly there, I think. A few more weeks, and you'll forget you were ever anything but my good girl, won't you?"
	"Yes, Loralee," Savannah whispered with mindless devotion, as her eyes slipped shut and she allowed the pleasure to take her.

THE END