Brain Games Ch. 13

"I'm sorry."

Zach sat next to Maddy in the common room, strangely empty on a rainy Friday afternoon.

"You should be," Maddy said. "But now that you are talking, I have a few things to tell you. First: I've been spending a lot of time with Mia. My question is answered. You know which one. Second: I don't know what all that was, last weekend, hypnosis or what. Whatever is going on with you, Zach, I wish you well, I really do. I admit I was super excited by it all, and our first time together is a beautiful, beautiful memory. But I need someone who's not going to walk away at the first sign of something hard. You need to figure yourself out, Zach."

Zach felt his mind go numb. This was not the conversation he was expecting. He had put everything into words in his mind, and was ready to share it all, and now his mind was as blank and grey as the sky outside the windows.

"I..." he wanted to defend against accusations of hypnosis--how could she even believe that?--he wanted to tell her that he had figured himself out, that that's what this week had been, that he was ready now. He wanted to share everything, even the very hardest stuff, especially that!

He also saw that she didn't want to hear it. He gritted his teeth. "Ok, Maddy. Just let me say this: after that night, things got weird for me. It wasn't us that got weird. It was something later. And I needed to figure that out."

"I'm sure it did, Zach. Weird shit happens around you. I thought I was up for that, but maybe I'm not. Good luck. And Zach... if any of it is real... please don't mess with me or Mia, ok?"

Zach was just tuning in to figure out what was really going on in her. At her words, he pulled his awareness fully back into himself.

"I promise," he said. "Good luck, Maddy. I really care about you, and I want you to be happy. And safe."

She gave him a dark look. After a breath, she nodded at the finality of it and left him by the windows.

Zach watched water droplets crawl down the glass in slow fits and starts.

* * *

"Jacob, I'm sorry I've been in such a cloud this week, man. I didn't even ask you what happened between you and Ava."

Jacob was playing an FPS on his laptop.

"Meh, it happens. She just ghosted me, dude. Monday morning, nothing. All week. She finally texted yesterday, said there'd been a family emergency, and apologized and all. She's back on campus today, but I don't know. Never been ghosted before."

Zach couldn't remember seeing him so serious.

He tried to tune into Ava, but he couldn't find her.

He lay into his bed, staring at the ceiling.

"How about you," Jacob said. "What about Maddy? You talk to her yet?"

"Yeah, we talked. Nothing's going to happen there, after all."

"Sounds to me like something already happened," Jacob said.

"Maybe, but I guess it was just a flash in the pan."

Jacob grunted, firing wildly at an opponent in his game.

* * *

Zach had the unfamiliar experience of feeling angry. It was not his go-to emotion, and he didn't know what to do with it. He didn't know who he was angry at: Maddy? Enkins? Himself? All of the above?

After stewing for a while, he went for a walk.

The campus was damp, empty. Dorm windows all glowing with light. Students being studious. He had time to get into the meal hall before the closed down the lunch line, but he wasn't hungry. He wandered into the student center, which was lively enough. TVs on in the scattered lounges, various club-spaces mostly lively. They were having some kind of a party that was spilling over between the student newspaper and student radio offices.

He dropped himself into a lounge and let CNN roll over him. Wars and rumors of wars.

He shut his eyes and let the familiar voices lull him, letting the anger drain out of him.

He began to tune in, feeling the brightness of the other students around the lounge. Some were studying (how can you study with a TV on? he had to wonder!), some chatting, some actually paying attention to the news (something going on between China and Taiwan), some taking a chill rainy Friday afternoon.

Zach let his awareness float and linger until he found a woman with a flare of arousal already alive. He didn't open his eyes, but just let himself linger with it, feeling it and gently letting his own come into alignment with it. He could feel how connecting to her arousal gently nudged his up.

He let his eyes drift open just enough to see who he was tuning into.

The woman sat curled up on some carpeted cubes, reading a tablet. She had her back to him. He got an impression she might be a little older than him, maybe a grad student. Dark hair, cheekbones, curves.

He went back to the place of feeling, letting himself settle more finely in alignment with her. She was reading, something that stirred her arousal. He felt into the layers, travelled the networks of threads. It was now easy for him to nudge up her arousal. He could feel it flare as he harmonized his energy with hers. He felt that intensifying aliveness spreading through himself and knew that it was expanding with her also.

He built the intention of her standing to stretch, to turn to face him. He walked the careful line between the feeling of it which was what had worked with Jasmine, and the visualization of it, which so far had never worked with anyone, and yet which somehow he could not stop his brain from trying again and again.

It took him some time. He remembered the sensation of successfully pushing an intention into Jasmine, but he discovered that all those tangles that form a person are wildly unique, and it took some discovering to figure out how to translate the intention from himself to her, leveraging the alignment of arousal, and then move it, using the force of his own will.

But it clicked. He felt like he was struggling in a net, and then in the space of a short breath, the resistance to his will slid away and she stood.

She stretched and turned to face him.

He opened his eyes and drank in the sight of her.

She was not as tall as he expected, with a broad curve to her hips and an ample bosom.

He felt suddenly powerful, the rush of control.

"Take me home," he said to her, running the intention through her as he did so.

"Ok," she said, and walked across the room.

"What's your name?" Zach asked as they walked down the broad, shallow steps of the student center.

"Vicky."

"I'm Zach," he said, as if they were having a normal conversation.

"Ok, Zach," she said.

He kept himself tuned in to her. There was puzzlement in her, perhaps some caution, but also curiosity.

"What were you reading?" he asked.

"A history of ritual prostitution," she said. "From when the Goddess ruled earth."

Zach blinked. This could not be an accident!

"Are you a Goddess worshipper yourself?"

She looked at him with a twist of amusement that seemed very much herself and at odds with the blankness of her obedience. "No, I am a scholar."

It still seemed like long odds to be pure accident. What had led him to the student center? To that spot? He couldn't say. He had been wandering in half a daze.

She led him across Montgomery, off campus. They continued past the close cluster of recently-built condos and into the narrow streets of older homes.

Hers was a shabby townhome in a long row of them. They were set back with a small courtyard, and hers was overgrown with ivy. Each had a small porch and a balcony; and the ivy had climbed the porch and woven through the railing of the balcony. It was all damp with the grey drizzle of the day.

"Here we are," she said, unlocking the door.

Zach quickly reinforced his control and his intention.

"Take me to your room," he said.

"Sure."

"You have a boyfriend?" he asked.

"No."

Zach breathed a small sigh of relief. Let's keep it simple from here on out, he thought.

As she led him up the stairs to her room, he began to ratchet up her arousal. Again, there was a resistance to this, but it only slowed him down, it didn't stop. She had a beautifully round butt and as he worked on the arousal her hips took on a bit more sway.

Her room was spacious, and very well kept. A couple of broad dressers, a closet, and a queen-sized bed, seemingly massive after the dorm beds he was used to. A vast television was mounted between the windows. The only thing out of order was a pile of boots and running shoes.

"Take your top off," he said, applying all of his conviction to the words, while boosting the intention through her, and beginning to ripple in pleasure, as well as nudging the arousal up more.

Even so, she hesitated.

"Zach?" she asked.

He didn't give an inch.

"Now," he said, putting even more focused intention into it.

She pulled off her heavy, long sleeved shirt, revealing exquisitely full breasts overflowing a sturdy black bra.

With her, he felt the brush of the cool air on her skin, and the tingle of arousal starting to spread without his help.

"Take off the jeans," he commanded.

With each act of obedience, the resistance dissipated. She smoothly wriggled out of the tight jeans. She had a softness, a roundness to her belly and a smooth fullness to her thighs. Thicc, they would say on tiktok. But Zach found his breath coming more quickly, and he sent his arousal straight back to her, amping hers up. The resistance was quickly fading. He felt her natural and native excitement rising.

"I've never done anything like this," she said.

Zach felt the luminous energy of their arousal starting to grow. At first he thought to align the shell with the walls of the room, but quickly saw that the corners and edges would leak. The egg that Enkins had created was the right shape. He drew the weaving of protective lines in more tightly, containing, compressing their combined arousal.

"Let me see your breasts," he said.

She smiled shyly. She reached back to unsnap her bra.

Her breasts fell forward, heavy and beautiful. She tossed the bra to the floor.

Zach carefully strengthened their egg. He could see that--compared to Enkins' pure smooth silk-black obsidian-hard egg--his was a shambles. It was like a crude mud-and-stone igloo... but it held the light in, and that was what he needed. He fed the lines of it with his energy, and with Vicky's. But they were becoming bright fountains of desire and arousal. Her gaze was hungrily fixed on him.

"Undress me," he said. And, unspoken, he pushed the raw hunger into her, now boosting her arousal and desire without any resistance at all.

She moaned and stripped him with quick, deft motions.

Zach had a moment of pause: why would such a shy girl be so quick at this? It didn't quite add up.

But she had his belt off in seconds and navigated his button-fly with effective brute force, and when his cock sprang out, she gasped.

"Stop," he said, and felt a surge of triumph as her motion came to complete stillness.

For this moment, he reveled in this moment of mastery. He felt his own will, bolstered by its success, grow stronger, more confident, completely inescapable.

He wasn't sure if he had all the lines right. But he gave the instruction: "Bring your lips to me, and when they touch, feel pleasure everywhere, rushing through you, an incredible desire for more."

Vicky gently brought her lips to him. She gasped, and then rolled back, giggling.

"It tickles!" she said, before gradually calming.

Damn it! Zach retracted that layer of instructions and went back to the simple: "Feel pleasure."

She shuddered and crawled back to admire his erection.

More, he instructed, pushing the raw desire through her. Boosting arousal, and with each throb of his cock, sending that urgency into her.

She held him in her hand and gleefully kissed and tasted him. Soon, she had him fully in her mouth and was hungrily slurping around his head.

With a slight push, she had her hand in her panties, leisurely rolling her fingers over herself as she enjoyed him with her lips and tongue.

Her pleasure grew sharp and choppy, and he felt it surging through him also. It wasn't quite orgasmic, but it was profoundly delicious.

"On the bed," he said, a husky imperative in his voice.

She not only leaped on the bed, she pulled her panties off, unbidden.

Kneeling face down, her ass was in the air, everything available to him.

He stepped forward and pressed the head of his cock to her pink, swollen, slippery lips. She moaned deeply with the touch.

"Tell me how much you want it," he said.

"Sweet Christ Jesus, take me!" she answered, and pushed her hips back at him.

He felt the pressure and then the pop as she took the head inside. She let out a low, beautiful groan, and rotated her hips against him.

Zach saw the full press of her lips to the bed. The fullness of those curves turned him on even more, and he began to work himself more deeply into her.

She reveled in it, thrusting and rolling her hips against him, enjoying every inch of him, panting. "This is so much better..." she said trailing off into moans and gasps.

He felt the rising tide of her arousal, and these rich, choppy sensations of pleasure rippling through her as if from every dimension. He kept a constant care on the solidness of their egg.

But she didn't seem like she was going to cum anytime soon, and without hers, he didn't feel his either. How long could this go?

The arousal seemed utterly maxed out. Anything more he put into it was just a drip in the ocean. She was riding him in every way, bouncing on the bed, rolling her hips and slamming herself back against him, finding the angle that would stroke her most deeply.

"More!" Zach commanded, and she began grunting and groaning, moaning in a hungry, guttural voice. "God yes," she was saying. "Oh God, Oh God!"

Zach had flashes of Maddy with Mia. If he let himself, he could feel them, also together, at this same moment. But even as he allowed it, he felt the egg starting to crumble. He hastily pulled himself together and poured his energy into restoring their shell.

"What happened?" she asked.

Zach looked down and saw he had lost his erection, something he didn't think was possible.

And in that moment the house shuddered as someone strode into the house downstairs.

"Vicky???"

A somewhat angry male voice filled the house.

"I told you, the student center! Where are you? Where's your fucking phone?"

Zach looked down at Vicky, seeing her consternation torn between his own loss of erection and the voice downstairs.

"Be right there, honey," she said.

"Who's that?" Zach whispered.

"Oh that's my husband, Ron," she said.

Shit! Shit! Shit!

The egg shattered.

Zach threw on his pants, only buttoning the top button, and shrugged back into his shirt. He made a run for balcony, scrabbling down the ivy even as he felt Ron's wrathful presence ascending the stairs.

He let go of Vicky completely, in every way, wrapping himself in shadow with his energies as he let himself out the front gate.

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