The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

While approaching the mountains I felt it was like a huge wall had grown on the horizon.

They weren’t mountains though. It was a series of tall barriers. Each one only so long but behind the openings in them were more mountains. No. More walls. Tall and hazy gray monolithic barriers.

Grasses swept back and forth before him. There was a growing feel of storm in the air. Clouds forming up from the direction of the wall. Nothing but fields of grass and flowers stretched out before the enormous monolithic structures.

Still she called out to me. I knew it was her. Plaintive though the sound was, I knew now it was for me specifically. Running worked my legs for a while but the mountainous barriers did not seem too much closer. The eyes I had seen before appeared as if a vision, lidded closed. Even closed they were like magnets to me.

Longing to touch the brow above those eyes, I drifted. Floating over the field swaying just at the base of my toes.

I was barefoot? Wait. What? Everything faded out of reach.

Janet had taken a number of surreptitious pictures of Ben. Quite a large number it turned out. She felt a bit like she’d become a stalker. Activities up to creating a little shrine like cubby at home with the photos tacked up. One thing she didn’t do was follow him far from work. Yet.

She was a bit jealous when she saw him with another woman, just talking. It happened more often than she would have anticipated. They were always women in heels, often blond, and their forms quite curvy. Sometimes they’d walk off together and she’d lose them, sometimes he went his own way. She felt an inner hunger making her feel she should seize his attention. Away from the office, her reluctance still prevented such an effort.

She had moved the lounger in front of the little shrine, where she sat now. The frequency this happened lately made her realize there’d been a huge change in her libido. It focused was intensely to the point she knew she was becoming obsessive.

She’d put her flesh colored vibrator in reach. The one she’d had since school to help her ease her tensions. The toys she liked to use for her needs were always kept near the lounger. Importantly for her now, the large dildo she’d recently purchased was already being rubbed along her wet sex.

The marketing executive who everyone else wanted to pursue was fixating on the photos as she stroked slowly back and forth along her pussy between her thighs. It would have shocked the her of only as recently as six months ago. She couldn’t really hear herself as she moaned, playing her fingers over her nipples. They stood up tightly at the moment, sweat building along the curves with each twist of her head.

With the vibrator she would already have crested too fast. The glorious hum against her clit tended to send her over the edge quickly. She found that disturbingly unsatisfying for this session. Her lips felt swollen, so she stroked her tongue over them imagining Ben kissing her.

Eyes open wide and feeling her groin grind with an engorged heat, she plunged the toy cock up her opening. She shut her eyes again and imagined Ben being pulled into her, her fucking him out of control. The thoughts raced almost to the point of making the rubber toy feel like a real organ. By now, she was pounding herself hard. She used the fingers she was caressing her breasts with to pinch the left nipple firmly, hard, and triggered the raging fire from her pussy.

In what started out a silent release, a tidal wave of contractions and forceful orgasm brought out a loud cry as she voiced her success in one word, over and over again. The word? “Ben!”

Her state was such she didn’t even notice the hooded figure behind her with a syringe. There was a sudden sting in her neck and the blur of orgasm became a blur of unconsciousness. “Damn,” voiced Carlos. “We should have just approached her to spy on him for us.”

He ran his glove covered fingers lightly over the photos. He wanted to probe her mind but was following orders. No use of the power while performing this job.

He did have another problem now. He had to carry her out of here unnoticed. How was he going to get the slut dressed?

After the pleasant visit to Celia’s apartment, Ben kept checking his eyes to see if they were doing the change thing again. Each time he left the apartment for work or to take one of his walks, he paused briefly by the mirror on the way out. Thinking back on that night was often coming up in his thoughts…

That evening had gone very nicely with Celia. Ginny had cleaned up what little mess the impromptu pizza dinner had produced. Celia wasn’t going to let her but Ben told her to sit down and let his girl deal with the minor task.

Surprisingly, in her own home, Celia did as she was told, sat down and continued chatting with Ben about what he did for a living. He explained he wasn’t particularly important in the role he filled but he performed his duties well enough his manager thought him indispensable.

“She?,” Celia said, and baited him to see if he would react about women being in charge, “how is it for you, working for a woman?”

He smiled and looked at her, “I’ve never had a problem working for women. It’s never been my experience they were different from any male boss when it comes to getting the work done. I can keep my private life separate from public behavior.”

At this point, Ginny had come and knelt before him where he sat on the couch. Once again she had done that elegant drop into place with her ankles crossed behind her under her bottom and her hands upraised on her upper thighs.

“All done?”

“Yes.”

“It’s time to get upstairs again. Perhaps a reward for being such a good girl.”

Ginny beamed. Ben stood and started for the door. He didn’t see it but Ginny lifted her skirt briefly grinning at Celia. Ben’s sex slave had no panties on, and was shaved to a very smooth surface, surprising Celia at the wanton act. It was as if she was bragging to Celia about what she got to do tonight. For some reason Celia felt a bit jealous. Confused, but jealous.…

Ben smiled thinking of how many ways he’d rewarded his little slut that night. It was just a continuation of the wonderful evening that had included Celia.

Pressure built up in Ben’s head. A mild headache like sensation perhaps. The feeling he had was that the normal flow of minds around him had moved a bit.

That made no sense to him and as he tried to scan about himself for a presence, he wasn’t finding one. He realized there were tenuous connections he’d been monitoring of people within range of him. Connections he used to keep from thoughts that were not his own from intruding on him.

He wasn’t sure how to label the feeling. It was like he was at the center of a spider web and something had stepped on the edges of the web. There’s a disturbance. He laughed to himself, ‘there’s a disturbance in the force.’ Well something had changed but so subtly he couldn’t identify it.

Faster than the pressure had built up, it faded away. He knew not to dismiss these feelings as imagined. Some kind of new event had happened to his comfort zone. Maybe he should consider it more like a web after all. He dismissed it for now and tried to settle his anxious mind.

There was a couple up a couple floors copulating. Rather than worry about the oddity that had interfered with his revery, he plunged his mind into their antics. Distraction to keep the paranoia at bay, he supposed. Certainly better than television.

Celia chose the blue dress to try on. It was so much shorter than she usually wore. The impromptu pizza party left her with thoughts. She was envious of the way Ginny was stroked by hair. She had found the way he touched the girl enticing. And intimately powerful. It was only touching her, but there was an act of protection and possession in the way he acted towards the girl.

Not without intimate experience herself, there was a time she was far from cold to men. The way Ben treated Ginny was remarkably tender. Though he also seemed very casual, there was more than mere controlling behavior. Celia had watched both the fire and the freedom Ginny seemed to experience.

High school, there had been a boyfriend she’d had liaisons with. It was a time of a wild rush emotionally. She had thought it to be the true love thing. The sex was a powerful emotional reinforcement of that feeling.

It wasn’t though. Certainly not true love as if from a romance novel. She’d brought herself to understand for him it had been just lust. Lust he would enjoy just fine with the girl from band just as well as with her. For Celia it had been ‘in love’ as the one who was hopeless without reciprocation. The tears lasted weeks.

The next time she thought it was love happened while out in the Hamptons.

It took a lot less time then to figure out it was her that wanted out. Her new beau proved to be rather abusive. Not physically, she’d even enjoyed some of the rough things. No, he’d be rough then wander off so she’d have to recover on her own. He refused to let her explain her need for being held afterwards. He had gotten so the only things he said about her were nasty, telling her she was worthless though she’d tried her hardest to please him. It took only a few such incidents and she had dumped him unceremoniously… and because she had come to believe he had a violent streak, said dumping happened in public.

The few other times she’d allowed herself to be bedded she had been cold to any real connection. She enjoyed the sex, yet not the partners. Most of those partners were acquaintances she’d had briefly from work. They were dull and unimaginative though adequate. She supposed she was a rather a sad sack. If she was going to give herself to someone, she decided, it should mean something.

She’d seen Ben praising the girl for minor things. It was the kind of attendance to needs she wanted from someone. She didn’t know if she was attracted to him so much as his demeanor, his behavior towards both herself and Ginny.

She didn’t want to be an interloper that stole another woman’s man though.

Shaking her head she looked at herself in the mirror. With red heels she thought the dress could give her the appearance of elegance while advertising her form well. Turning in a way she thought of as girlish, she smiled at herself. She realized it was time again for her to let herself be seen as desirable.

Why was she doing this? It didn’t matter. She wanted to have the feeling of being wanted. She’d liked the idea of being attractive after all this time of repelling men to protect herself.

Maybe she could find a protector, the way Ginny had. She looked at the back of her legs in the reflection. Maybe some stockings, if she could keep the seams down the back straight.

Bedroom antics with his live in slave-slut aside, Ben still went to work. He still took walks alone to seek out desirable women of New York. That pleasant activity had come close to running its full course. He still had moments that seemed zen like as he sat alone in various cafes around the city taking in the pulse of its inhabitants. He still had concerns he was being watched.

It could appear as though he had become dispassionate. Really, he wasn’t. It was more about being very selective about using the mental powers he’d gained. Attempting to make his skill with them more surgical than used with brute force.

Watching a clock in the office gave him an idea. The second hand moving slowly around in it’s lazy circle until it completed a revolution and then, the minute hand moved... he laughed to himself ‘minutely.’ Hitting the browser, he started to look up radar and how it worked. How the energy came from the signal sent out and reflected back.

He didn’t know if it would work with scanning minds. If it did work, he wouldn’t be putting all his energy into spreading a thinning film like sense around him. He’d be able to range his efforts much longer distances. He tried to sit still to let the thoughts scan go out with only a finger thin width. He started to have it circle about him, around like the radar images he’d seen for the weather. Only, somewhat quicker.

His first problem was his head tried to turn the direction the beam was pinpointing out from him. It took a number of attempts before realizing he’d associated the effort with the direction he was looking. Doing the spilled film kind of sensing was like sinking into the puddle. This was like trying to be a whirling dervish. He concentrated on back and forth in front of him for a little bit. He finally got what he assumed was something like a sixty degree arc in front of him without having to turn. He could work with that. The arc width could be changed with practice, he was sure.

While he did this he was still pinpointing the people and scanning the ones in the pattern while he moved it. The detail he got was finer, easy to sort male from female, standing from sitting, what was being looked at, emotional state, to name a few things. Those were not the interesting parts though, What was interesting was how many people in the arc he was scanning had light impressions on them other than his own. Like the touch he’d felt in Ginny.

Doing this he discovered no one in his office had seen Janet for days. That might not have been bad. She would take time off pretty much unannounced for shopping sometimes. Not for days though.

Apparently no one had a clue where she’d gone off to.

Janet didn’t know who walked into the room. She’d heard the footsteps. Her eyes were covered with a blindfold and she was strapped down on with only the slightest cushioning behind her. She could feel the needle in her arm.

There was also an intrusion in her groin. Her thoughts may have been fuzzy, but she concluded it must be a catheter. Whoever they were that had her bound, they didn’t want to deal with her having trips to the toilet. Just thinking about it made her feel a need to relieve herself. She had to admit to herself was powerless.

“If I had my way,” one voice said, “I’d just have my way.”

There was a moment of laughter from another direction.

“She’s not for you,” another deep voice came back with a tone of disdain. “You really need to control those urges to more practical situations.”

“Men,” came a woman’s contralto voice. It was clearly the voice that had laughed.“How predictable. All you ever think of is what you can stick your penis into.”

“Don’t be all holier than thou with me,” came the nasty voice again, “I’ve seen you with your play toys as well.”

Janet wanted to speak up but realized her mouth was filled with a gag. It wasn’t terribly tight. She could probably make noise around it but she bet the sounds she’d make would only be noises. Noises that might excite voice the first. She found that idea disturbing.

“This will take a little bit of effort,” said the deeper voice. “She’s already been altered slightly. I’m not sure we want to disturb that. Though,” a chuckle came, “she might find it a bit of a relief if that was removed.”

Janet had no idea what they were talking about, she pulled at the restraints. They were firmly in place. She would have to hope for either a rescue, or being set free by these people. What could they want, really? She found herself drowsing.

Shortly she was dreaming. The dream involved Ben. Something about that brought her some sense of relief.

Carlos felt uncomfortable around Georgiy Bulgakov, the taller man being physically intimidating in person. With his Russian criminal background, Georgiy was the Wizard’s most effective enforcer. This made Carlos nervous all the time. One simply did not offend the right hand of God.

The two of them together escorted the woman back to her home. They put her to bed knowing with certainty she would remember neither of them. The little exercise in programming her would be outside her memories as well. Georgiy went to the room with the little shrine to see to it no hint they were there remained.

Carlos though took a few moments extra to feel her small breasts and slip a finger in her cunt. The anesthesia they’d used wouldn’t wear off for an hour or so. He played with her clit a bit which brought on a series of moans in her sleep.

“Carlos, you’re a pig.” Georgiy stood at the door looking up from under his brows in disapproval. “If she wasn’t to be touched during her visit with the Wizard, she’s not to be touched now.”

He withdrew his hand, holding palms up in a surrender pose.

“Fine, Fine.” He tucked the blankets around her. Then walked to the door.

The taller man clamped his hand on the back of Carlos’s neck. Tightly. “Don’t forget your orders again or the Wizard will just have to replace you.”

Carlos’s eyes bulged. He could feel the fingers on the back of his neck and knew, just knew if Georgiy chose to his neck would break. He gulped.

“I understand,” the tone sniveling.

“I’m serious. You have been so very reckless lately. Your fate is all your own doing.” The hand withdrew, “now get moving.”

With a click behind him, Georgiy used the key they had, locking her apartment behind them.

Walking in the office, he could see a lot of scrambling going on. Without Janet around, he thought it unlikely this would be happening. A smile crossed his lips as he thought about that. He wasn’t fond of covering her work load when she was out.

He saw the door to her office was open so he stepped in.

“Welcome back,” she looked almost as radiant as she had after the Haggelstein account had signed the contracts. “Where’ve you been?”

She looked up at Ben and her expression was suddenly one of someone suppressing their reaction. The object of her obsession being in her office alone with her took her mind off everything else. It was good she was sitting down because her legs felt shaky.

“I had a family emergency out of town,” she pulled her chair closer to the desk so he wouldn’t see how out of control the legs seemed to have become.

“It’s good to have you back though.” His kind words caused her a jolt of both hope and dismay. The conflict between her job and desires was a struggle

“Please close the door on your way out,” she ducked her head back to the work on her desk. Evidently several things had piled up in her absence.

He stepped back out of her office closing the door behind himself. She never once mentioned family to him before. Since when did she say ‘please’ when telling someone to close the door? After contemplating that, he walked to his desk and started his ritual of activity.

Behind the closed door Janet was frantically rubbing herself off. Restraining herself around Ben had become difficult, but just being in the room with him alone had made her need bubble up to the surface.

Ben could sense her sexual frenzy. Usually he’d just enjoy it from here, but something seemed off. He closed his eyes and wondered to himself if he dared allow himself the depredation of her mind. Considering he’d already given her the very light touch that had given her a heated obsession… it wasn’t a tough choice.

What he wanted to do was a very light narrow probe though. As he first guided his thoughts into hers with that tight focus he could feel the pulsing of her sex, the fingers she had rubbing herself off, the fingers pulling at her nipples, her ragged breathing and the fierce hunger she had developed.

He lingered to enjoy that. She finally orgasmed though and his body wanted to respond by thrusting his pelvis and unleashing his own seed. He resisted. Wet slacks would be a little embarrassing in the office. His thought probe quickly alerted him she’d been mentally touched by someone other than himself.

Having learned to be far more delicate in his intrusions into the minds he touched, he was very careful as he explored the changes the unknown intruder had made. It didn’t take a lot to realize his own contacts in Janet’s mind were left intact. The mystery intruder perhaps thought that would fool him?

He spent the next hour appearing to be sifting through paperwork at his desk. The reality was he kept open a thin mental probe to Janet’s mind. Working his way through myriad twists and turns the unnamed interloper had left to protect the manipulation that unknown person had performed. It didn’t take much to realize this wasn’t the doings of the slimy dark haired man who had taken over the pizzeria. This was another mind with a far more subtle touch. It still seemed less than elegant and concealed. Alterations were concealed, but not the way he’d set protections for Ginny.

Ben wondered if it was safe to work through the triggers and traps left for any unsuspecting exploration. He’d learned well though since his earlier flawed experiences. His effort was meticulous in avoiding manhandling the internal workings. Soon he had found almost every corner in her mind that had been altered and had a fair idea what had happened to her really. Some of the sealed off parts included things she felt and heard along with what her mind tucked away in her subconscious.

With diligence and care he started to disassemble the little pieces of malicious triggers and traps that had been left behind. One of the first he got rid of was a trigger to have her commit suicide if someone dug in her mind too deep. That made in particular was sickening to encounter.

Patiently Ben curled his way into every corner of Janet’s mind, taking away the damage done by the unwanted guest, restoring the elements of her that had been suppressed or locked aside. Fortunately there were no interruptions to the quiet time spent on the series of adjustments.

One thing he learned while doing the restoration work was about how the control he exerted to get her to kiss him had turned so heavily into an obsession. It left an impression but wasn’t a permanent alteration to her mind. It had however caused her to release some of her own self limits. She had set herself serious self constraints against starting relationships. Especially any work relationships that could turn into outside the office intimacy. That hadn’t prevented her though from having her desires and attachments. That she had those desires focused on him previously was pleasant to his ego.

She’d had one fling in her early twenties with a co-worker. But when they were promoted above her, she cut it off. Gently, but firmly. Determined to advance on merit, she didn’t want to even have the appearance she was using sex to rise in her career. It was a common thread in the place. More women in the business had their careers cut short by relationships than men, an unfair reality of the workplace. She knew it could harm her. The career was the one thing she valued above all else.

Along came Ben and she’d noticed him immediately. In two senses that is. She found he was quite good at complementing her skills in getting the job done. The other sense was she felt a sexual draw to him which she immediately crushed under the weight of her career priority. She had enjoyed being his manager and would not allow any impropriety get her sent to HR. Still, she had thought he was hot.

This exploration told Ben his little push to make her kiss him was a nudge around the corner of her own self imposed constraints. If he’d pressed for anything more she’d have ended up all over him all the time. The hot kissing had woken the suppressed desire she had which in turn ran headfirst into her intended goals. There was no way to relieve that other than her little manic masturbatory exercises at home, or behind a closed and locked door at work.

He could suppress that again. He could do that. There was another little matter to deal with first.

There was the problem of the mystery guest and what she’d been programmed to do. Specifically having to do with Ben. He could correct that and clear her of the truly awful controls, but it would not resolve issues with the people who had kidnapped her.

A plan started to form. At least, he thought he had a plan.

Thursday. One tries not to rush things, he thought.

Celia encountered Ben in front of the building. He had been about to hail a taxi, but instead was delighted to see her.

“How’s Ginny?,” she asked.

“She’s happy as a lark. Healthy as can be too, the minx.”

“I got curious about your lifestyle. I tried to research it on line but it all sounds like so much hype.”

“As a lifestyle, it wasn’t planned. I,” he looked up a moment, trying to think how to explain, “was pleasantly surprised myself.”

“Do you love her?” Celia turned a little red, not used to asking intimate details of others’ relationships. She was very curious about what happened behind Ben’s door though.

“Odd question,” he fixed his eyes on her’s. She thought they were turning that silver color again, such an odd thing to witness. It seemed his answer was prevarication wrapped in something that was not familiar ground for him to talk about. “I suppose I do. Not the way I think you mean though… I don’t know. There’s reasons I can’t say for sure but think of it as a protective umbrella emotion. I just don’t think they can be explained.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to intrude.” Celia felt smaller from her inquisitive action, though thinking the answer he’d given to be evasive, “She seems so at peace and so free in a way.”

“She is indeed.”

“May I ask what her safeword is?”

“What?”

“Her safeword. The word she uses to tell you that you’ve gone too far and need to stop.” His thoughts raced as he realized he really hadn’t given much thought about other people with such relationships. He could just feel in her mind when something was wrong. Somewhat akin to a cheat code in a computer game.

“Are you looking for your own?,” he asked. A deflection seemed more effective than trying to answer that. How could he explain to Celia’s limits with Ginny were easily read from her thoughts? He couldn’t. So having a safeword? There simply wasn’t one. Explaining that would be difficult, to say the least.

Ben was thoughtful in this discussion with her. As he watched her, her eyes went down. It wasn’t an act of submission so much as it was embarrassment. She seemed more interested in him recently. There was a sense she was crossing her own lines with talking to a guy. Ben though was the person she suddenly had opened up a bit to, since the girl living with him displayed such intense trust in him.

“I’m glad to have seen you, but I have a meeting. Maybe we can get together for pizza again sometime soon,” as he finally flagged down a cab. It was rare he took a taxi but there was some urgency to this meeting.

It was not for work after all.

Ominously, Carlos had the task of trying to monitor the woman. The woman who worked with the hot shot new mentalist they’d discovered.

He had to watch her physically since he was told not to use the skills he had. He wasn’t a PI for cryin’ out loud. This wasn’t his thing. He fought the urge to do as he was told and lost. He’d much rather be grabbing some chick for a bit of relaxation. He did tend to go through them quickly though, leaving broken shells behind with regularity. Broken, because he’d leave them unable to deal with anyone afterwards. Unless he happened across them again.

A few times that had happened, and that gave him as much personal pleasure as the first time. Usually because he left them remembering exactly what he’d done to them but unable to tell a soul. The husks of a person he left behind knew what he liked to do to them. Just seeing him again could devastate them immediately.

Fear. Carlos loved the taste of fear when he saw their eyes. On his own, he would leave them aware of exactly what he was doing, had done, could do. He left a trail of despoiled and damaged young women behind. When it pleased him to do so, he would make their partners watch too. His actions were best described as destruction, nothing less. Oh how he craved doing that to this woman.

How he enjoyed defiling them.

He was so preoccupied watching for the girl, he did not sense other presences in the shop he was waiting in. A man in a light weight sports jacket watched from behind him. Subtly, the man kept his eyes away from Carlos. All Carlos’s reflections on what he’d like to do to the woman just kept rolling through his mind, a steady distraction to wile away the time waiting. Whenever his thoughts wandered away from that, he found himself back to that distraction quickly. Contentment in comfortable thoughts kept him busy.

Sorting and folding clothing was one of Celia’s least favorite activities. She did so usually in sweats while her other items were running through their cycles. When Ginny walked in the room with a couple bags of laundry, she smiled at the girl.

“Time to deal with the smelly stuff?”

“Oh yes, it’s all about keeping our mess under control. So much to wash because so much gets so dirty so fast!”

Celia looked and saw there were several sets of sheets, some few washable shorts, anything that couldn’t be dry cleaned. A lot of towels it seemed. Not a lot of women’s undergarments and evidently Ben wore tighty whities. For an instant after noticing that Celia turned red and consequently, turned away to her own laundry.

“I had fun visiting the other night.”

“Yes, it was pleasant having Ben bring pizza and saving me from having to cook.”

“I like cooking,” replied Ginny. “You should come to dinner sometime.”

“I’ll give it some thought.”

“Sounds good,” and Ginny pushed the tray with quarters into one of the machines, starting it up. “Friday or Saturday nights would be best. I think. I’ll have to ask sir.”

Celia laughed. “I doubt Ben would say no.”

“He might insist though,” replied the other woman, “that in our apartment his rules apply.”

“I see, you think he’d believe his rules apply to me?”

“oh, no. Not without consent.” Ginny did one of those cute smiles. “But they would still apply to me and him, which may not be quite the same as you expect. It probably will mean I don’t eat at the table though. I usually have my meal when not serving.”

“Oh.”

Celia was unsure what exactly that would mean. She wondered aloud, “What do you think is likely to happen?”

“I...” Ginny turned red, “I have to be ready for service all the time at home. Clothing free for one thing. Proper presentation for another. Sir likes to make use at random times and I like to beg for use at various times. He may or may not agree to, it is up to his whims.”

“Use? What do you mean by ‘use’,” her eyes opened.

“It means sex, toys, punishment,” she paused, “he dislikes physical punishments which I wouldn’t mind. He says he prefers to let me know I’ve made mistakes in other ways usually.”

Celia blinked. In a way that was both disturbing and enticing. She felt her own privates heating up a bit considering possible activities, “you think he’d decide to just have sex with you while I’m present?”

“He might. He might not. Master likes you and might not wish to embarrass you.” She smiled and dropped her chin, “I am his to use whenever he chooses. Punishment he might defer until you’re not there, but when he is displeased it is obvious. That is a punishment too, knowing I’ve displeased him in any way.”

“Punishment, does that happen often?”

Ginny pouted a bit, “Not often enough sometimes, too often others. He doesn’t get angry the way other people get angry. Angry is not good. I’d like some of the physical punishments though sometimes. It gets me heated up differently, so this one feels worse when he doesn’t use physical means.”

Celia could feel a dozen more questions welling up inside her. She thought better of it. They spoke while the laundry was finishing, on other topics. She liked being around Ginny. The odd relationship with Ben intrigued her, but she felt like she was prying by asking.

Margaret was angry. Carlos, that pig, wasn’t at his post keeping an eye on the woman

When she arrived at the apartment where they had their gear set up there was no sign he’d been there at all. Only her knowledge that he’d been here when she’d left at the end of her shift gave any indication he had been doing his job at all.

She checked all the monitors. Janet was back at her little shrine masturbating again. Yeah, figures, she thought. Nothing new going on. But that wasn’t an excuse. Georgiy would be furious. Hell, the Wizard would be outraged.

She’d heard them give Carlos warnings before. He just liked slipping his leash and wandering off target. He was probably chasing some mute skirt. Some mute he could force to do his depraved activities with him. She should probably find out where he was before she reached out to Georgiy for help with the pig.

A few minutes later working with the equipment their pet security firm gave them, she’d found nothing. There were other sources though.

“Hello Lucas, “she said when the phone picked up.

“Maggie?” The male voice on the other end sounded surprised, “how are you? What are you calling me for?”

“Alabaster,” she said. This triggered Lucas to follow her orders. She’d put him into One Police Plaza a long time ago. Periodically she would gather information from him. Usually information her boss wanted to know. He had no idea he’d been doing anything. He thought Maggie was a long time friend from his days in the academy.

“I need you to run the GPS coordinates for a phone,” she read off the phone number for Carlos’s cell. “I need it immediately. You figure out how to fudge the warrant for me. I don’t have time to get someone else involved for that.”

“Just a minute,” the sounds from her phone were soft keystroke noises. It took some time. She watched the monitors and saw Janet was in the shower now. Good looking lady, she thought. Tough luck she’d gotten ensnared in all the things surrounding this new mentalist. That’s what happens to mutes though. They’re not able to resist at all. “Here you go, that phone is in Brooklyn. Let me text you the address.”

Her phone buzzed with the text message. “okay, now delete the text from your phone.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Done?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Berlitz,” she gave the forget-me phrase and he hung up. He wouldn’t remember this call happened at all, and would clear any clue it happened from his own phone. Too bad they couldn’t erase the records at the phone company. The Wizard was working on that.

Looking at the address, she dialed another number…

“Georgiy?” She hated having to call him but if she didn’t, it would be worse. If she called the Wizard directly, that’d be the wrong thing altogether. This was far and away the safer action. “We have a problem with Carlos.”

Georgiy, for his part took the call and looked at the address. It was Carlos’s home. He didn’t have the time just now to go check on Carlos in person. A further string of phone calls and a few people in Carlos’s neighborhood were triggered to get Carlos. Shortly, Carlos would be with Georgiy explaining abandoning his task. It would not be pleasant.

Ben stood back looking at the building Janet lived in.

He had gotten out of the cab at the end of the block. The follow you and follow me things going on with the observer following him was getting difficult in just thinking about normal activities. Maybe he should hire someone to follow him to see who was following him? No. These people could alter the way people acted, like the staff of the pizza parlor. The best way, he thought, would be if they did something to lead him elsewhere.

Janet was the only person he was connected with that he’d caught on to their meddling. Either they were being very cagey or… what?

He walked up the next block over, slowly trying to use his quick clockwise scanning method to look for anyone doing a stake-out on Janet. Stake-out. How cops and robbers. Understanding it was of interest that he had this odd talent of the mind had made him skittish to begin with. Invoking images of law enforcement and government agents was really unnerving. He didn’t want to have anyone poking and prodding him to learn how he ticked.

There. That building ahead of him. He could feel two men who were intent on watching a woman getting dressed. Narrowing his focus to them, he identified the woman they were watching. It was clearly Janet. Neither of the men were endowed with the mental talent he possessed. He’d have to get closer, find out what they knew. They had to be associated with the individual trailing him. Why else would anyone be spying on her?

Until this mental talent manifested he’d been a private enough person. Someone spying on him was a bit of a shock. He’d never been interesting enough for people to be sleuthing around him. The most interesting things he did were all work related, none of which could be worth the attention someone might put into it. He was fascinated with the way his work was meant to alter people’s perceptions. Marketing was like that. Making people do things with their money they might not otherwise do. This had nothing to do with that. The manipulation in Janet’s mind made it obvious this was about his new and unbidden talent.

Probing the two men watching Janet proved they didn’t know who they were doing this for. There was a phone number they were to call under a number of circumstances. One of them was to follow her if she left the house, reporting her movements to that same number. He could tell they had just been two random men pulled in and set to the task. Ben’s conscience nagged him about the way he was using people but whoever did this simply couldn’t have cared.

Slowly trying to dismantle the crude and obviously hurried controls on the two men meant first getting closer. He tried the door to the brownhousethey were in. It was as expected, locked. He knew nothing about picking locks, so the door was in all respects impassable. Could he make minor adjustments to their minds from this distance? All he needed was one of them to open the door.

It occurred to him that sometimes the simplest means were the best. His finger found the doorbell and rang it. Over thinking the mind control stuff was making him lazy, he guessed.

Listening, both with his mental trace on the occupants and with his ears, he was soon rewarded with the approach of one of the two from inside. The sound of the door scraping open soon followed. Before the man saw Ben, he fell into a deep slumber. It was simple, taking the risk of being seen wasn’t a good plan. So he gently moved the stranger off to one side and closed the door.

“Who was it?,” came the other man’s voice from the top of the stairs. Close enough for him too, Ben put him to sleep, giving him just enough time to slump to the floor so he wouldn’t fall down the stairs.

It took about twenty minutes to erase the memories of being in the house, and their instructions from… whoever it was that wanted Janet watched. He walked the men one at a time to the door, and down to the street. Blotting out any memory of having ever been there, he let them wander off to whatever normal life they’d had before they’d been hijacked mentally.

Satisfied he’d cleared away some of the unknowing minions, Ben climbed the stairs to the room filled with monitoring equipment.

This was absurd and amazing both. They had every room in Janet’s place under surveillance. What a strange word to apply to his boss, surveillance. Changing his life was already surreal to him. Stuff like this made him want to go hide where he couldn’t be found. He didn’t want to be the center of their attention. The center of a few women’s attention perhaps, and then only more than one because… well, he could.

He had to pause on that thought. Just how many women did he want? What could he actually deal with? When this started he’d have been happy with one but Ginny wasn’t… well, his desire had been directed at his neighbor. Celia was just, so hot, so perfect. She was intelligent, working on her degree, and beautiful. That blond hair and her eyes. Eyes. He always found himself focused on women’s eyes.

And their ankles, their hips, their neck, their breasts, the… He shook his head. In all respects other than this mental talent, he was a normal guy with a normal guy ego. It wasn’t becoming megalomaniacal. These other bastards though… spying on him, spying on Janet. Some kind of power play game had to be involved. He wasn’t exactly out there poking his way into banks, corporations, or politics.

It took a while, but Ben shutdown the computers with the storage set up to keep recordings of Janet’s home. He did so with commands to do a hard clean reformat so the data would be well nigh impossible to recover. Tracing the lines they’d only set up a single network connection. He didn’t know enough about computers to know if they’d been downloading the information to another site.

A moment of thinking and he knew he couldn’t dismantle the computers well enough to matter, but he could get rid of the cameras. So out of the little rat-hole spy’s nest he went, finally making the hike to Janet’s place. Was she surprised when he turned up at her door. Not wanting her to know about the cameras, he put her to sleep for a while on her couch.

Then he set about to find all the cameras. He had a good idea where they were from the images he’d seen on the monitors. Finding all of them took a couple hours. After he’d gotten all the cameras he’d been able to find, he collapsed on her couch. Now what, he thought. Not surprisingly Janet was still sleeping on the couch.

There’s something about an attractive woman relaxed in sleep, he thought. If I wake her up, then what? Just how many women did he think he really could manage in his life? His hand ran over her hair a moment. He touched his fingers to her soft lips and his hunger arose.

Apparently, he thought, three seemed like a perfect number. Magical almost.

“Wake up Janet.”

“Hello?,” she looked up at him dazed, “What are you doing here?”

He tucked a finger under her chin and leaned in for a soft velvety kiss. Her eyes closed and she let out a sigh of contentment as they slipped into a closer embrace. His hand found her left breast over her blouse, rubbing the palm over her nipple through the fabric.

Janet felt her hips start to move. Yes. She wanted this.

Georgiy stood in a room far up in a building in the finance district. Carlos shuffled his feet in front of Georgiy looking for all the world like he was lost. Because he’d summoned Margaret to confront the man, she stood back and to his right side. He nodded to her. “You got someone, I gather, to watch the store for us?”

“Wasn’t hard, but we won’t know if the mentalist shows up if one of us isn’t there.”

“I know,” then he turned to Carlos again. He wanted to rip the man to pieces. He’d been a lot of trouble lately and this was in the category of last straws.

“Why did you walk out on the observation post?”

Carlos just stared at him blankly.

“What observation post? Who are you anyway?,” the dark haired man seemed nervous and confused. “I have to go to work in an hour. Let me out of here.”

“Where do you work?”

“Thirty-Seventh Street. The warehouse, Kuchuskies. I’m probably late, ain’t I?”

Georgiy stared at Carlos a moment. Then probed his mind. He staggered as he found the unexpected.

There was no hint the man ever had the talent. He nodded to the hired muscle to remove the useless Carlos. Walking to the nearby window, he looked uptown towards the tall buildings in midtown.

Looking down he found his phone. Disturbed, he dialed a familiar number.

“Sir, the little pig is no longer with us.”

“No sir, he’s not dead.”

“Somehow something removed everything, including the talent.”

“He’s practically a drooling idiot now. I found he’s back to thinking he’s day labor in the garment district.”

“From the gps on his cell phone.”

“I don’t know. It could be this new mentalist did it. I don’t know.”

“Yes sir, we’ll push up the acquisition date.”

He closed his phone and looked at the woman by the door. “You know, it might be simpler to just shoot the guy. Trying to convert him might turn out to be risky if he was behind Carlos’s,” he paused, trying to find the words, “new disposition.”