I glanced restlessly at my watch: ten minutes to spare before Lady Olivia’s appointment. My heart was pumping strongly and there was a strange tension in my gut. I pulled the bottle of JD from my desk drawer, unscrewed the cap and took a long swig straight from its mouth. The fiery liquid burned all the way into my empty stomach. Heat sped along my veins warming, easing, dulling. Artificially relaxed I sprayed breath freshener into my mouth.

Horrible stuff.

I stood up and walked over to the window. It was late in the afternoon and the pavements were already full of people hurrying home. I had been there for less than a minute when a Rolls-Royce Phantom pulled up on the street. Then, even though I really, really wanted to watch her slide out, I moved away from the window. I straightened my tie, shot my cuffs, sat in my chair, and twirled my pen. My pulse was jumping.

What the hell is the matter with you?

Behaving like a fucking hormone-crazed teenager.

The bell rang. I put the pen down and listened to the blood pumping in my ears while out front she was let in, asked to fill in the disclaimer form, and reminded to use the restroom before her session started. I glanced at my watch. Four minutes. I badly wanted to have another swig. I resisted and waited for Beryl’s soft knock.

It came three minutes later.

‘Come in,’ I called.

The door opened and she stood in the doorway dressed in a tailored, gunmetal-gray dress, thick black tights and flat black pumps. How should I describe her? Petite. Blonde hair tightly pulled back into a ponytail. Heart-shaped face. Straight nose. Absolutely enormous, glossy, gray-green eyes. And a full, small mouth that she had painted a frank red. She was neither classically beautiful like her stepmother nor pretty in the girl-next-door sort of way.

But she was…intriguing. Very.

‘Good afternoon,’ I greeted, standing up.

‘Hello, Dr. Kane,’ she said and took a step into the room.

Her voice held that fey, non-aggressive, aristocratic tone of the British upper class, and her expression was a politely closed door, but her sexuality reached out like a long tentacle and touched me. I can tell you now, it wasn’t pleasant. It was cold, sensual, compelling…and undeniable.

The Goat of Lust had me by the fucking balls!

I had never encountered anything like it before. I could liken the sensation only to the moment when a youth first discovers that he is attracted to other men. There is sadness and regret that he is not like everybody else, and dismay at the task of confronting his parents with the ‘bad’ news. Laced underneath the trepidation is intense curiosity, terrible excitement for the forbidden, and not an ounce of revulsion.

Right there and then I knew that under no circumstances could I treat Lady Olivia. I was too sexually aroused to remain detached or impartial. And I could only see the situation in my pants worsening with more proximity. The last thing in the world I needed was to court another scandal. Nothing good could come of it—for me, or her. I would give her one session and at the end of it when I had a better overview of her case, I would recommend a couple of regression experts whom I trusted.

I gestured my open palm toward the chair facing my desk. ‘Have a seat,’ I invited.

‘Thank you,’ she replied and began moving toward it.

Coming forward, Beryl raised her eyebrows and gave me an old-fashioned look as she passed me Lady Olivia’s forms.

‘I’ll be out front if you need anything,’ she offered archly.

‘Thank you, Beryl,’ I said dryly, but she just winked, and quietly closed the door.

I turned my attention back to Lady Olivia. She had just reached the chair and was slipping into it. For some seconds I stood simply staring at her, mesmerized, actually helpless in the pull of her sexuality. Totally at odds with her cool expression, her carefully measured greeting, her severe hairstyle, and dull, somber clothing, her movements were shockingly sensuous.

She actually reminded me of those insects that have no voices and communicate by vibrating their bodies. Her body was communicating with me. The touch-me-not image she had created for her new amnesiac self was not the truth. Behind the façade lived a supremely sexual creature. The clue was in the startlingly red, come-hither lipstick.

I tore my eyes away, dropped her forms on the table, lowered myself back into my chair, and faced her. She was watching me like a cat, dignified, detached, and unblinking. Up close and facing the light from the window, her eyes were like two slicks of liquid mercury, completely opaque. I didn’t know it then, but I was as doomed as the Red Indians at the Fort Pitt siege who were tricked into accepting small pox infected blankets and handkerchiefs from their white enemies.

‘Lady Olivia—’

‘You must call me Olivia. Lady Olivia is too grand.’ She wrinkled her nose charmingly. ‘It makes me feel awfully pretentious.’

I grinned at her. ‘Nervous, Olivia?’

She smiled back. Great smile. ‘Extremely.’

‘Don’t be. It’s painless.’

‘Oh! Good.’

‘Right then. Let’s see what we have here.’ I pulled her forms toward me and glanced at them quickly.

Age: Twenty-five.

Not on any prescription medication.

No to the illegal drugs question—or at least none that she wanted to disclose.

No to photosensitive epilepsy

No nervous disorders of any kind.

Non-smoker.

Alcohol consumption: Two to five units a week.

No allergies.

No phobias that she can think of.

In short—a model citizen.

‘It all looks good,’ I said looking up.

She was staring at me again with that intent cat-look of hers. ‘That’s marvelous. So you will be able to hypnotize me?’

‘I’ll give it a try. As I explained to your stepmother, not everybody is susceptible to hypnosis.’

‘Oh.’ In that one little blameless sound was a world of disappointment.

I leaned back, my chair tipping, and regarded her with a friendly expression. ‘Tell me, Olivia, what are you expecting to come out of your session?’

Her hands fluttered. ‘I suppose I want to be able to remember my past—or at least some of it.’

I nodded. ‘Do you remember nothing at all of your past?’

‘Almost nothing.’

I found my eyes roving her face distractedly. Her complexion was milky white and when she spoke she hardly moved her mouth at all.

‘What do you remember?’

‘My first and most vivid memory is of my grandmother. She was smoking a menthol-tipped cigarette in the Tapestry Room and she opened her silver cigarette box and popped one between my lips so I could pretend to smoke. I remembered the thrill of sucking on it, the cold minty air that came out of the filter, and her amused, indulgent expression as she looked down at me. I knew that she loved me dearly and I loved her just as well.’

‘How old do you think you were then?’

She shrugged one shoulder, a lazy, sinuous movement. ‘I don’t know. Maybe seven.’

Her lips had not shut after she had spoken but remained parted and moist. A glimmer of perfect white teeth showed in the gap. And I suddenly and absolutely craved to see her naked and sucking my cock.

I coughed. ‘How soon after your accident did this memory surface?’

‘It happened at the hospital as I was coming out of the anesthetic. After that there were no more clear memories—just vague impressions of familiarity, feeling that I knew a place or a person, and unconnected—I must say, disconcerting—flashes of images.’

‘Disconcerting?’ I questioned.

‘Yes. I’ll get a flash of something and when I try to remember more I’ll end up with a stabbing headache. My doctor says it’s some sort of post-traumatic thing. At other times I get to a point then my mind will go completely blank, as if I have come up to a brick wall.’

I nodded and tried hard to concentrate. ‘I see. What about dreams? Do you dream of the past?’

She frowned. ‘Not really. But I do have a recurring dream where I am going down a dark hallway. I think it could be the east wing of Marlborough Hall, our family home, but I’m not sure. I seem to be very young because my bare feet are very small and my toes are painted shell pink, but untidily, the way a child would paint them.’

Unconsciously she hugs herself.

‘Then I reach a door and I am suddenly filled with a frightfully intense sense of impending doom. I want to turn around and walk away, but I cannot. My whole body is clenched and trembling with fear. I am so terrified I feel sick, but I turn the knob and open the door.’

She lifts a shaking hand and wipes her nape as if she is smoothing down the hairs standing up at the back of her neck.

‘I find myself at the threshold of an unpainted, uncarpeted, desolate room. It is bare but for a rocking chair that is rocking all by itself. As if someone has just vacated it. I know from the silent fear that hangs in the air that something very bad happened in that room. Then I wake up in a cold sweat, frightened, uneasy, and with a strong sense that I am in terrible danger.’

I stared at her, surprised and unsettled. This was not at all going the way I thought it would. ‘Do you see a psychiatrist?’

‘Yes. I see Dr. Greenhalgh once a week.’

I nodded. ‘Good. One last question. How did you feel when you first saw your family?’

She shifted uneasily in her chair. ‘I don’t know. I could hardly believe it when they said they were my family.’

‘Why?’

‘It just seemed extraordinary.’

‘In what way?’

A strange expression flickered across her face. She clasped her hands in her lap. ‘I’m afraid you’ll think me awfully ungrateful.’

‘Try me?’

She licked her lip and, looking me directly in the eye, said, ‘Because I felt no love for them at all… No matter what they said or did for me.’