The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

I was thinking about wagon wheels when he touched me on the shoulder. My senses buzzing, my thoughts disturbed, my mind tried to take me anywhere else besides the man sitting next to me, the man I’d lain with. Flowers. Blue ones and yellow ones, passing by just as fast as the ideas in my head. Trees. Heights. Birds. Clouds. My eyes came up to track them, and up, and up, and over, and over...

Callum met my distant stare with a friendly smile—and a blush, too, I noticed. I hadn’t looked him in the eyes all morning, though not for lack of trying. He hadn’t made significant headway in his attempts, either. Only now, passing out of a copse and into a field of wheat-golden nothing, were we given no other distractions, no other excuses to keep to ourselves. There were still clouds, and still birds, and way-off down the dirt track there were still trees to focus on. But the noise and chaos inside me was fading, being surely replaced by a poised, hesitant, hopeful silence. The longer I watched him, and the longer he watched me, the more the sound of silence was joined by feelings: a void in my stomach, a numb tingle in my toes, an itch I had to scratch...

He looked away. I looked away.

... and when I looked back, he was looking again. And then he wasn’t, and neither was I. It wasn’t so silent now; my heart beat so fast I was sure he could hear it. Or would he even be able to over the sound of his own...?

Thoughts returned to me, as sudden as a slap in the face. You’re acting like a child, they chided me.

So what? So what if I felt like one, so what if I felt giddy, nervous, and excited just from his presence?

Nothing’s wrong with it, was my own reply, so long as you do something about it.

That I could manage. Right? Yes. I’d done much more with men than necking in a tent, and much more often than just once. But then again... those encounters had never left me feeling so exposed. Callum hadn’t even seen me naked, but it felt as though he’d seen much more of me than those men who had. Perhaps he did see more, beneath the surface. He was perceptive like that. Clever. Quick, considerate. A very good kisser...

No. Enough of that. Had to make a move before I drove myself insane. With glances as subtle as I could make them, I saw that his hand had left my shoulder (something I failed to notice, as the warm and twitching sensation had yet to leave the muscles there) and placed itself on the wood bench between us. Just a hand. Thin, fleshy, smaller than mine; nothing to be afraid of. But to place mine atop it felt like scaling a mountain, and Callum certainly startled loud enough that it must’ve been a similar shock.

I grinned at him, as his face drew nearer to mine. “Surprised?” I asked.

“Somewhat,” he admitted, with a smile of his own. “I was wondering if we were just going to sit here all day.”

“It’s a long ride. What else could we do but sit?”

“Well...” Callum chuckled, leaning closer still. Very close.

I pulled away, but showed him my smile just the same. “That isn’t an alternative, that’s an addition to sitting.“

“So why couldn’t we, Truth?” he said, clearly pouting and clearly playful.

“Not in front of the horse.”

“Come on!” Callum laughed. “I’m sure Patience wouldn’t mind.”

“Oh, he wouldn’t mind,” I agreed, “but he would definitely be jealous.”

The prodigy blinked at me. “Jealous of... who, exactly?”

I shrugged. “Who do you think?”

“You’re odd,” Callum remarked.

“So?”

“So I like it,” he laughed. “It makes you interesting, perpetually.”

“Or fascinating,” I muttered under my breath.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Oh.” He scratched at his jaw, temporarily driven back into his own thoughts. “So, how much further is it until we get to...?”

I patted his hand, grinning when he gave another jump, smaller this time. “Just a couple of days now.”

“Ah,” Callum said, swallowing. “Not too long at all.”

It may have, in point of fact, been too long. Eventually my hand left his: to take the reins, to slide through my hair, to break the intimate contact before it could spiral into something even more intimate. But saints, how I wanted to touch him even more. The restraint on my arm seemed to be doing the opposite of its purpose; rather being distracted from Callum, I felt obsessed with him. The inability to focus made my thoughts careen from fantasy to fantasy, sensation to sensation, hopping and skipping along as the hours ground away slowly beneath our wheels.

I wanted him, naturally. That much was clear.

And does he want me? I asked myself, time and time again.

Of course he did. That much, too, was clear. Twice, I caught him leering. Once, I noticed him outright staring—but I didn’t stop him. His magic could make his own discarded clothing disappear, but they couldn’t do that to the very garments I wore... could they?

Another question, another fantasy. Often I dreamed up the places he could take me with those powers, the sights he could show me, the things that could appear so real I could feel them in my hands... I didn’t know how far his abilities went. But I wanted to. I wanted to know if he merely held power over sight, or if his prodigal talent could extend to hearing, smell, touch...

Another thought, another fancy. His hands touching me, caressing me, whisper soft and hard as stone—everywhere and all at once. I’d bedded with mages, but never an illusionist. So it was only natural to be curious. Would I be able to feel the royal robes he could clad himself in? Would he shiver at their touch as I slid them off him? Could I tell if what I closed my hand around was truly his size...?

Still more thoughts. Still more dreams. I’d seen his hardness, of course, it had been impossible for him to hide. Barring magic. But I had yet to see it. More than just that, I’d yet to see how he could feel. I enjoyed his company, the night before. By all accounts, he enjoyed mine. And so, I told myself, picturing a bit more enjoyment was no large thing. No danger in imagining, no harm in thinking. Not once did I fret for the silver band in its small case. Not a single time did I think of using it, think of fearing it, or even think of it at all.

Until the cart rounded a bend, and the next run-down, shabby farmhouse that appeared was my own. I sat upright, startled, as though it were a specter looming in the long evening shadows. My house, my home, my life. All of it was back before me, undeniable. No more playing at adventuring: I was a farmer, and a Judge-to-be. The building looked... different. Perhaps that was from my travels and my absence. But more likely, it was because of who I sat beside.

Patience came to a natural stop, just at the short track that headed down toward his short stable. He brayed, and snorted dismissively when Callum prodded him to move again. “What’s with you?” the prodigy muttered. “You’ve been fine all day, a perfectly functional horse, a shining example of your species: and now this? Did something break? Are you broken?”

I laughed. Callum turned toward me, but his smile quirked strangely when he saw that I was already dismounting. “What is this?” he asked, again, rubbing his shoulders and cracking his neck. “Am I broken? You did say two more days, correct?“

“One more, now,” I said, grabbing one of my rucksacks from the rear of the cart and moving up to the front. My hands brushed through Patience’s mane, feeding him a morsel before unhitching him. “Less than that, actually. We’re done for the day.”

“Really?” He looked around, bewildered, like he’d just woken from sleep and was seeing the surroundings for the very first time. “Doesn’t someone live here?”

“Oh, someone does alright,” I snickered, while Patience trotted off to his familiar hutch.

Callum pulled at his collar, clearly distressed. “Then won’t they be... well, you know. Disturbed?”

“Why should they be?”

“Well.” He crossed his arms, refusing to move from the cart. “I may have tolerated one attempt at breaking and entering from you, Truth, but two is simply too many. We’re not criminals. We’re adventurers, aren’t we?“

I raised a hand from my coat pocket and let dangle the iron ring from my fingers. “Is it really a crime if you have the keys?”

Callum sped to dismount without another word.

“It’s certainly... um...”

“Rancid.”

“What? No, I mean that it’s—”

“Musty?”

“Please, Truth, don’t disparage yourself so much, it really isn’t that—”

“Delicious?”

Callum opened his mouth to speak, then took a few more moments as he parsed over my response and my wide grin. “Yes. I suppose that it really isn’t that delicious. Good... way of putting it, that.”

“I’m not good with food,” I said, bringing a forkful of... whatever I had made, up to my lips.

“And yet you grow it?” he questioned, brow raised.

“Didn’t say I was good at that, either.” Both of us shared a giggle. The meal was nearly over by then, finished as hastily as it had been assembled. Not much was left edible in the house (I hadn’t had very much on hand before spending a week away), but we summarily devoured what there was. Slicing, lifting, chewing, slicing, lifting, chewing. The repetition gave me room to focus on our conversation, on our interests, on our laughter. Callum was a scholar by nature, and I was not—this gave him many opportunities by which to launch himself into wild, roaming tangents. That was something I valued.

But with as much ease, and as much naturalness, he was able to take the supporting role. He knew nothing about farming, owning land, trading goods, nor about paying off creditors. And oh had I stories upon stories. More than once I got lost, chasing down some fading line of thought, but Callum knew how to lead me back to something relevant again. He was a good listener. That, too, I valued.

After a time, there was only so much to talk about. The temperature. The weather. Favorite songs, favorite works of art. To my delight, Callum conjured a few of those last ones (“Poor imitations, paltry compared to the real things, but they do paint the picture for you..."). But the sun had set, and there was even less to talk about. Plates were cleaned and candles were lit, even as he insisted on providing light for the whole home himself. “It really wouldn’t be difficult at all,” he told me.

“I know that it wouldn’t,” I told him, “but I’d rather your attention not be so divided.”

“My attention? Divided?” Callum scoffed. “You doubt my abilities, Truth. I’ll have you know that I...” His words trailed off, and he stared after me as I drew back—still facing him, still smiling, but receding from the kitchen and down the hall. “... I can direct my attention however I wish.”

“Really?”

“Truly,” he said, nodding eagerly and standing to follow me. “I... um, have a lot of it to go around?”

I paused in place. “Is... that some manner of innuendo?” I asked, hesitantly.

Callum blinked at me, pausing himself to ponder. “... No,” he decided, after a few moments, “I don’t think that it was.” Then he looked up with a smirk and a gleam in his eye, so bright that I thought it to be a spark of his magic. “Do you want it to be?”

“What if I did?” I murmured, holding still while he approached a few paces.

“If you did,” he said slowly, “I might ask: on where exactly would you most enjoy the vastness of my attention to be directed?“

A hand covered my lips to hold back my giggling. “This way,” I said, and led him in deeper still.

The bedroom came to light slowly, illuminated candlestump by candlestump from the one I kept in hand. Callum stayed still on the doorway, anxious to cross that precipice until explicitly invited. “You can come in, you know,” I chuckled, once the room had been mostly revealed in the dim light.

“S-sure,” he stammered, dragging his feet two steps inside.

I blew out the good candle and sat it down in a holder’s empty place. “Nervous?”

“Me?” A laugh came out from him, strangled, but a laugh. “Of course not. I’m never nervous.”

I don’t know if he could see my face in the darkness, or if he had instead sensed the motion before it reached him, but when I rushed forward to grab him, he was ready for it. Almost ready. My arms caught his in mid-motion, pinned them to his sides while a gasp left his throat. “Truth, what are you—”

“Hush.” A twist of my body, effortless, was all it took to hurl the prodigy sideways and stumbling into the room’s wide bed.

He caught himself on the sheets, clenching them in his fists. “Soft,” he remarked, hoarsely. Before he could continue, before he could even right himself properly, my long coat hit him square in the face. “Truth!” He shouted, scrambling with both hands to free the garment from his neck, “Quit playing around and tell me what’s going—oh.”

I stood in front of him, arms to either side of my chest, hands loosing the third of six buttons that kept my bare body separated from the cool, crisp air. The way he stared at me, coat in his hands, hands on his head, eyes agog—it was ridiculous. I can’t imagine it now without laughing harder than anything.

But right then and right there, it was all I wanted and more.

“Do you need to be told?” I whispered, removing the fifth of six buttons.

Callum shook his head numbly, bringing his hands to his lap along with my coat. I didn’t have to look to know what he was covering up. “I thought you said—” he cleared his throat loudly, then spoke softer, “I thought you said your clothes would stay on.”

“That was a rule for last night.” I offered him my shirt, which his hands took graciously, while his eyes took in the bared curves of my figure. My belt was quicker to go. The trousers even moreso. In my mind, there was no time for a show, no time for teasing, no time for anything. My mind was scythe-sharp, focused, and hungry.

“I’m feeling overdressed,” Callum muttered, leaving my clothes in a heap and standing up, still in his own.

“Trade places?”

“Oh, I would gladly.” His hands reached forward. They hesitated there, inches from my chest and hardened nipples, before coming to rest on either of my shoulders. “May I?“

I nodded ‘yes.’ He didn’t need my strength or surprise to toss me into the bed. Rather, he held my gaze firmly, guiding me with his hands while we stepped around each other. “You’re beautiful,” he whispered, breaking the spell to look down at the rest of me, nearly naked from my hair to my boots.

“You flatter me.”

“I tell you the truth.”

“Then tell me what you want?”

Again he hesitated, but he swallowed and nodded to himself, reclaiming my gaze with eyes that seemed to glow. “I want to touch you.”

Chills, up and down my spine; flush that blossomed over my cheeks. “I know,” I managed to say.

His hands caressed my shoulders, slipping down each arm. “I want to know more about you.”

“I know.”

“I want to... make love to you,” he murmured. One of his hands glided across bare flesh, stopped. The other pressed against the cold metal of the band on my arm.

Shivering. This time it wasn’t my own. Callum’s hands trembled, then resolved themselves to squeeze my arms, to squeeze the restraint in his fingers. My head ached, my thoughts scattered, and my eyes left his to search the room around me. Old things littered the shelves, old things spread across the walls. An old self. A wrong self. But a person I still was.

Callum looked at me—he wanted to touch me, he wanted to know me, he wanted to love me—but he saw someone else. He didn’t see the woman that I was. He didn’t see the monster I had been born as. And he couldn’t see how much I could hurt him. Just like the rest. Just like anyone. Just like everyone.

“Do you have to wear this, all the time?” His words fell into my ears from someplace else.

“Yes,” I said, though my mind was elsewhere, too.

“Just touching it, I can feel how... how wrong it is...” He was shaking his head, distant from me. “I want you to... to be able to be yourself, around me, Truth.“

I should have spoken, should have stopped him there, but he took my hesitance as a sign to go farther. “I don’t want you to have to try and protect me from yourself. You’re not a danger to me—I’m not afraid of you, Truth.”

“But you should be,” I whispered.

“Why?” he asked me, hurt held back in his voice.

“I can’t... I shouldn’t...” I shook my head. “W-we shouldn’t be doing any of this now.”

Callum frowned. “But I thought you wanted this...?”

“I do want this.” My fists clenched, my voice felt weak and tired in my throat. “I want this more than you do. I want this more than I’ve wanted things in a long time.“

“Then why can’t we just—”

“Let go of me.”

His hands were clenched around my arms. Slowly but obligingly, he released them. I took a step back, sniffling. “Thank you.”

“I’m sorry if I hurt you,” he said, bringing the offending hands together and clutching them tight. “I just... I don’t want to lose you, to yourself or to something else. Not after all this.”

I sat down on the bed, staring at some trinket on the wall. Thinking of the ring of silver. A sigh left me, and I looked up to Callum’s face. “One day is all I ask for. I show you what I do, and I tell you why I’m a danger. Why you should run, and why you should want to lose me. We finish the journey, and then...”

“We’ll see what happens.” He smiled, a small thing in such a small, dark space. “For all of that... I can wait a day. Goodnight, Truth.”

“Goodnight,” I said, and he walked out the door.

I stared, long after he’d gone, long after I’d heard him settle into the armchair I’d spent so many nights settling into. I wanted to be with him, in there or in this bed. I didn’t want to be alone, not anymore.

One day until you are again, my thoughts whispered.

“One day until we see what happens,” I answered back.