The Boo Lover

"This is amazing," Tom said to her excitedly as they walked, hand in hand, in Central Park.

"What do you mean?" She asked. "It's just a walk in the park, isn't it?"

She could see the size of the smile on his face and was truly surprised that he seemed so excited.

"Yes," he said, still almost giddy, "but it's our second date."

"Okay," she replied, "and?"

"You really don't get it, do you?" He asked.

She shook her head.

"In all the years we've been together, we never

actually

dated, now did we? We were really good friends. We spent a lot of time together, reading, studying, debating every topic known to man, visiting gramps - may he rest in peace - but without a hint of romance. We

never

dated. I moved in with you, we started having sex, but there was still no real romance. We were living together, and sleeping together, and still had never actually dated."

"Hmmm," Jessie replied, "I hadn't really thought of that, but you're right."

Now that he mentioned it, it

did

feel different this time around.

"Then," he continued, "you found the book, and it started a whirlwind of sexual debauchery - most of which was incredible by the way - but still there was no actual dating, or any real romance. This is literally only our second date.

Ever

."

"And you are enjoying our date?"

They had met for dinner and a few drinks after work, and were just strolling through the park, casually talking, holding hands, and enjoying being together. She had to admit, it did feel

really

good.

"Immensely," he said, smiling at her. He turned her to him and gave her a tender kiss on the lips.

"Me too," she admitted as they kept strolling through the park.

"I must confess," he said, "that after Jaleh solved my coding problem on Saturday - which is still quite unbelievable by the way - I was expecting something

very

different when we got back to your apartment and I allowed you to push your desire into me."

"Oh really," she said, grinning at him, "what on earth were you expecting?"

"Something involving far fewer clothes."

"And so you were disappointed?"

He shook his head.

"You already know I wasn't in that moment. I realized after I left that you made me desire nothing more than to ask for a second date and give you a goodnight kiss, didn't you?"

She smiled and nodded.

"Were you disappointed later then, once you'd figured it out?" She asked.

"No," he said. "it was actually the perfect thing. You allowed us to start all over, from scratch, and I think it's

exactly

what we needed."

"Agreed."

They kept up the casual stroll through the park, talking and laughing and holding hands as they just enjoyed being together.

On their way back to her apartment, after Tom had been quiet for a little while, Jessie asked a question.

"What are you thinking?"

"Don't you already know?" He replied.

"Of course not," she answered.

"But you could?"

"I

could

, but I promised I wouldn't."

"But there really is no way I can ever know, is there?"

He was right, or course, and he definitely still had good reason not to trust her. But suddenly Jessie had an idea.

"How about we try a little experiment?" She asked.

"What is it?" he asked.

"You'll see," she replied, "but you'll need to let me into your thoughts for just a second."

He stopped and looked at her. She could tell he was a little nervous.

"Okay," he said, after a long moment of contemplation.

She immediately entered into his consciousness.

-I want you to make me a promise, babe-

-what is it, ma'am?-

-Until we get back to my apartment, i want you to agree to not use the word 'the'-

She sensed he was very puzzled by such an odd request, but he responded.

-yes, ma'am-

She immediately left his thoughts and looked over at him.

"Thank you," she replied.

"You're welcome."

She smiled at him and gave him a little kiss.

"What are your plans after our date tonight?" She asked him.

"Well, I was going to head back to.. apartment, put on.. Knicks game, and then see if I can fix.. coding issue that Jaleh helped me with last Saturday."

It was all Jessie could do to not laugh out loud. He didn't even realize what had just happened. There had been a tiny pause in every place where he

should

have said 'the', but he didn't say the word. It sounded really weird, but he didn't even have a clue that he had done it.

She pretended to look at something on her phone, but instead started recording their conversation.

She found the trip back to her apartment quite amusing. Tom's speech was incredibly awkward anytime he tried to use the word 'the', and he didn't even notice it was happening, which turned out even better than she had hoped.

She invited him in to her apartment when they arrived.

"I have something I wanted to show you," she said to him, pulling out her phone.

"What's that?" he asked.

"I apologize," she explained, "for recording our conversation without telling you, but it was part of the experiment I was conducting. I'll delete this as soon as we're done here."

She pressed play and they listened together. It took a couple of minutes for him to notice what was happening.

"What the hell?" He exclaimed. Almost as soon as he said it, he realized what was going on. He was now able to say 'the' because they had arrived at her apartment, but he'd been unable to say it at all until they got there.

She smiled at him.

"I learned early on," she explained, "that agreements made inside the realm of consciousness are binding. Do you remember that night that Larry came over to invite us out to dinner?"

"Yes," he said, "it's a little hard to forget."

"Well, on a whim, I agreed inside his consciousness that I would submit to anything he wanted to do to me. I discovered that I was bound by that agreement. I wouldn't have been able to stop him from doing anything he wanted to do with me. Fortunately he was pretty harmless, so it wasn't a painful way to learn the lesson. So, I thought maybe I would show you how binding agreements are when made inside our own consciousness. i picked something you wouldn't really be able to consciously control to prove the point. I actually wasn't expecting that you wouldn't even notice you were doing it, that was just an added bonus."

"So what is the point of that experiment?" He asked.

"Let me back in your head for a second, and I will show you."

Again, he hesitated for a moment.

"Okay," he said eventually.

Once again she slipped immediately into his thoughts.

-I promise you that I will never enter into your consciousness in any way without your permission, and that I will only access things you've explicitly allowed me to access.-

-thank you, ma'am-

And then she was back out of his consciousness, smiling at him.

"You just experienced how binding agreements are when made inside our consciousness. You were completely unable to use the word 'the' until we got back here, even though you weren't even conscious of the effort to avoid it. I can assure you, from personal experience, that I am similarly bound by agreements I have made."

"I see," he said.

"You asked how you would know if I was ever inside of your head. Now you know that I won't

ever

be inside your head without getting your permission first."

He stepped forward and took her into his arms and kissed her.

"Thank you," he said to her.

"No," she replied, "thank

you

for letting me back into your life when you had every reason not to."

He kissed her again. This time the kisses began to be more urgent and much more passionate. His hands began to roam over her body, starting at her waist and moving slowly upwards to the sides of her breasts.

She broke off the kiss.

"You should know," she said to him, "that I don't really think I would be a second date kind of girl."

He smiled at her.

"I wouldn't have ever expected you to be," he agreed.

"I did have a great time tonight," she said to him, "and I'd love to see you again soon."

"Me too," he said. "I'll call you soon."

He kissed her goodnight before heading home for the night.

"I think you are ready to practice," Jaleh said as she floated above the brightly colored, woven tapestry that represented Ethan's interpretation of the pool of consciousness.

Jessie was amused at how he'd chosen her appearance the first time she had joined the two of them in this realm.

He'd clearly been influenced by images of native women from tribes of Africa and the Amazon, dressing her in only a loincloth, her small but perky breasts with thick puffy nipples on display, her skin quite dark, her hair looking like wild, natural dreadlocks.

For her part, Jaleh hadn't really even seemed to notice or care about the appearance he had given her, she just immediately stayed on the task to which she had been assigned, helping Ethan learn how to more easily access the consciousness of others.

They had discovered that his powers were indeed somewhat limited compared to those of Jaleh and Jessie. He could really only get inside of people in the same general area as him and who were thinking about him on some level, or at least aware of his presence near them.

Once inside someone's consciousness, he showed himself incredibly adept at analyzing their conscious thought, something he had a lot of practice doing in his life, albeit much less formally.

It had taken him much more practice, however, to learn how to access memories more than a day or two old.

In this particular session, Jaleh had been teaching him how to notice and interpret the differences in the patterns representing memories. It was similar to what Jessie had done when learning about Jack's unethical behavior, but Jaleh had much more formal and methodical ways of doing it.

"Now that you know better what you are looking for," Jaleh informed him, "I have a task for you. I want you to go through the people around you and find the juiciest secret you can find, and come back and tell us about it."

Jessie noticed that Jaleh looked over at her after saying this, and took notice of what Jessie thought of the challenge before speaking again.

"None of us will ever be allowed to do anything with this information," Jaleh added, "no matter how juicy the secret is, unless someone is in danger, of course. This is purely an exercise to help you practice."

Ethan looked over at Jessie, who just shruggged her shoulders and nodded. Allowing Jaleh to teach her had made her so much better and more efficient at being able to access information, she wanted Ethan to benefit from her tutelage as well.

She knew that, in the past, Jaleh would have had a reason for finding someone's juiciest secret, namely to use it to exploit them somehow, but once that motivation was removed, Jessie had to admit it would be very good practice.

Neither Jaleh or Jessie could help him in this task. They were physically much too far away to be able to connect to anyone inside a bar in Savannah, except for Ethan of course, because of the connection they shared.

Ethan went still for what seemed a very long time as he reached out to search into the consciousness of those around him.

"Thank you, for helping him, Jaleh. It means a lot to me."

"You are, of course, very welcome. I am surprised that he seems so far behind in the use of his skills, but then I guess he's really only been using them for a very limited number of reasons."

"Not at all unlike you and I when we were young," Jessie pointed out.

"Yes," Jaleh argued, "but we grew out of it."

Jessie just shook her head, thinking about how far off that statement was, but when she looked over at Jaleh, she saw the smile on her face indicating she knew the irony of her statement.

She looked Jaleh over.

"Why haven't you corrected the image he created for you?"

She reached up to play with the very puffy nipples Ethan had imagined for her, and shrugged her shoulders.

"I actually kind of like it," she said. "and besides, why should I care in the first place? I've been imagined in far worse ways by many people, including yourself I might add, in my 5000 years of existence."

"Touché," Jessie replied.

Eventually Ethan came back from his explorations.

"And what did you find!" Jaleh asked him.

"Well, for starters I decided to avoid searching for secrets involving illegal activity to stay out of any ethical dilemmas created by your restrictions on using the information."

"Technically they were Jessie's restrictions," Jaleh chimed in, "or at least ones I knew she'd want, but do go on."

"It made the challenge even more interesting anyway because I had to be even more specific in my examination of patterns. I think the most interesting secret I found involves a couple sitting in a booth behind me. They are one a date for their twelfth wedding anniversary. They have three children. She doesn't have any idea who the fathers of any of the three children are, except that she's pretty confident they aren't her husband's."

"Ooh," Jaleh replied, "that

is

juicy."

"There's more," Ethan went on.

"Do tell," Jaleh encouraged.

"She's seriously considering that it's time for a fourth. And the reason it was so easy for me to get into her head is that she has seen me and considers me a prime candidate for someone she might like to try out as a potential father."

"My, my," Jaleh responded. "So are you going to give her a chance to try it out?"

He just shook his head.

"I can't," he said with a smile. "You said we couldn't use any information I found."

He looked over at Jessie and smiled.

"And besides," he added, "I've already decided that I'm not using my powers to seduce women for a while. Maybe never again."

Jessie sensed that Jaleh wanted to make a comment about this, but instead she held her tongue.

It was their fifth date, exactly two weeks after the first date they went on. They had both thoroughly enjoyed each date, connecting in ways that never really happened the first time around. After each date, Tom had walked her back to her apartment, kissed her goodnight and headed home.

This time, however, he was not headed in the direction of her apartment at all.

"Where are we going?" She asked him.

"You'll see," he said. She could tell he was excited about something. She really wanted to slip into his consciousness and see what was up, but she knew it simply wasn't allowed.

Eventually they showed up at an apartment building that Jessie didn't recognize at all, which made her even more puzzled. He punched in a code in a keypad and the door opened for them, adding even more to her confusion.

"Are we visiting someone? A friend of yours?" She asked.

"Patience," he urged her as they got on the elevator. "You'll see soon enough."

They got off the elevator and walked to an apartment door. Tom stopped and knocked on the door. They waited for a little while, but there was no answer. There were no sounds at all emanating from the apartment.

"Are you sure they are home?" She asked. "Are they expecting us?"

He knocked a second time, and waited again, but there was still no response. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled something out.

"Well," he said," I guess I'll have to use the key then."

"What is going on, Tom?" She asked, even more perplexed. She knew where Rebecca lived. This was definitely not her apartment. What was he up to?

He unlocked the door and they went in and looked around a little. The apartment was almost completely empty. There was a refrigerator in the kitchen, a table and two chairs in the breakfast nook, and no other visible furnishings of any kind.

"So who's place is this?" She finally asked.

He led her to the kitchen table and picked up a piece of paper and handed it to her. It was clearly an invoice from a well known internet service provider. She looked at him, puzzled once again as to why he would be handing her someone else's paperwork. He nodded towards the paper in her hand and she looked at it for several long seconds before she realized it had his name on it.

"Wait! This is

your

place? You didn't tell me you were getting a new place! Wait a second. How can you afford a place like this?"

"Well," he said with a smile, "I didn't really share details about what happened with Jack, but I was the one who found out what he had done. And I was the one that figured out the best way to fix it, and install the tracer that law enforcement wanted. They asked me to lead the team that implemented the fixes. That's why they hired a relative newcomer to take Jack's place. It's also why they are paying me a lot more money to make sure they keep me around."

"God, that's great!" she said, pulling him in to give him a big kiss.

He showed her around, explaining the ideas he was thinking about in terms of furnishing and decorating, and asking her opinions on it all. Eventually they got to a fairly long wall that looked like it might be a challenge to decorate.

"I was thinking that this would be a great place for a whole bunch of bookshelves," he told her. "Just in case I ever need to store a large collection of books."

He looked at her expectantly.

She looked back and smiled.

"Don't you have to actually read to have a collection of books?" She said, grinning at him.

"I hear the ladies like a guy who has a big one... ummm... Collection of books that is," he replied laughingly.

"Seriously though," she said to him. "Why would you want room for a collection of books?"

"Well, the truth is, the company is paying me a lot more, but it still isn't enough to comfortably afford this place, so I am planning on finding a roommate. I hear the person I was thinking of has a lot of books."

"How many?" She asked with a sly smile.

"Enough to fill a storage facility, from what I hear."

"If I didn't know better, I'd think you were asking me to move in with you," she said.

"Then perhaps you don't know any better, because that is precisely what I am asking you to do."

"When?"

"We could start right now as far as I'm concerned. Once you can get out of your lease, then we can share the cost of this place. I can make do for now, but it'll certainly be easier with two incomes helping to pay for it."

"What makes you think I would want to live with you?"

In response, he stepped up and kissed her, passionately, his tongue demanding entrance into her mouth. It was, by far, the most passionate kiss they had shared since they went on that first date. His hand found her lovely ass and pulled her into him, grinding his hardening cock into her pelvis.

"What makes you feel like I am a fifth date kind of girl?" She asked him with a smirk.

"I'm just thinking that if we are going to move in together, we should try out the bedroom first, unless of course you'd rather stay in the guest bedroom."

"You think I'm going to let you keep the master?"

"Does that mean you're planning to move in with me?"

"Maybe," she replied, "although I'm not sure. You still haven't even showed me the bedroom yet."

He took her hand and led her into one of the two bedrooms. There was a king size mattress, still on the floor, a small nightstand with a lamp and an alarm clock on it, and three pieces of luggage open on the floor with clothes inside. Other than that, the room was empty.

"How comfortable is the bed?" she asked.

And then he was kissing her again.

Their hands freely explored each other's bodies as their tongues chased each other in and out of their mouths.

"Oh god I've missed you so much," she said to him as he untucked her blouse from her pants and almost frantically began unbuttoning it. When it was open all the way, he practically tore it off of her.