11

Note: This story is a relatively slow burn -- erotic mind control content throughout but sex only in later chapters.

Chapter One

She entered my life on an unremarkable day in the middle of winter.

I was leaning on the hard plastic seat of a bus-stop in an unfamiliar neighbourhood, using my half-empty delivery bag to provide some amount of cushioning. I blew into my bare hands, cursing the cold and cursing myself for not finding a real part-time job.

Between the work I was doing for my final year at uni and my own reluctance to put myself through the awkward process of applications and interviews, I had found it easier to make money delivering junk leaflets. The pay was dismal and the work time-consuming and dull, but I had simply fallen into it through general apathy.

Numbed by the cold and absorbed in self-recrimination and bitterness, I didn't notice her approach, and jumped in surprise at the sudden closeness of her voice.

"Hi."

I turned to look at her leaning next to me, uncomfortably close although we were alone at the stop. I had always been sensitive to invasions of personal space, and immediately went on guard, sizing up my unwelcome companion with suspicion.

She was bizarrely lightly dressed given the weather, wearing a simple, casual knee-length black dress that bore most of her shoulders and her collarbone to the cold, but despite this I felt warmth radiating from her even through my winter coat. She was a little shorter than me, and her dress highlighted a slim form, yet despite this her presence felt larger than mine. It must have been something in her expression. She wore deep red lipstick on an unwavering smile that was a little more cocky than polite, and the dark blue of her eyes was highlighted by perfectly coifed lashes. I felt a pang of jealousy -- she looked like a movie-star with her makeup expertly applied on an arrestingly beautiful face and caramel hair falling around it in full, bouncy curls.

I didn't say anything in response, just gave a brief, tight smile and shifted a little further along the bench, trying to indicate with my body language that I wasn't in the mood for small talk. I never was. Every unexpected interaction with a stranger was nothing but a pain to me. However, she was undeterred.

"Not very talkative, sweetheart? That's alright, I like to do most of the talking anyway." Her voice was feather-soft, and yet it carried on the air, clear and resonant.

This situation was becoming harder to bear by the second -- she didn't look much older than me, why was she calling me 'sweetheart'? I found terms of endearment like that uncomfortable when they came from my closest friends, let alone a stranger who approached me on the street.

"Now, you don't live around here -- I would have noticed you for sure."

I shivered a little, and not from the cold, as her eyes flickered over me. Sort of a gross, cheesy compliment, I supposed. I very much hoped she wasn't flirting with me. Not only would she be barking up the wrong tree -- I had no interest in other women -- but flirting was another kind of social torture to me. It got worse as she continued.

"So where do you live? Is it nearby?"

I don't know what I imagined she would do with it, but I was certain I didn't want to give even a whiff of personal information to this strange woman. She would get the hint that I wasn't open to conversation when I got up out of my seat and waited for my bus a couple of feet away from her. Before I could get up, however, she reached across me and laid her fingertips on the side of my face, and I felt it for the first time.

The warmth began from where her touch met my skin and pulsed from there through my entire body. My muscles relaxed, preventing me from standing. The grey street before me blurred out of focus as I felt it rush my head, and when my vision sharpened again things seemed brighter, more colourful. Each pulse disrupted my attempts to gather my thoughts; I felt light and hot as a dancing spark. One thing I knew strongly was the desire to turn back to look at her again, and I let her fingers guide my head around.

The feeling intensified as I looked into her face. I had noticed before how beautiful she was, but now I felt that I was seeing something else, something I'd never seen before. The red of her lipstick was brighter than before, and the way it accentuated her lips I could almost feel their fullness. With her free hand she brushed her hair away from her eyes, (so richly blue you could drown in them, I now realised), and the gesture was so elegant it took my breath away. I watched as the curls tickled at her collar, and my eyes were drawn to wonder at her trim figure. The dress was tight against her, not disguising the inward curve of her waist and the gentle outward curve of her hips. Leaning as she was, the material was bunched up just slightly, and for some reason every inch of visible skin was exciting to me, quickening my pulse.

A cloud of breath alerted me to the fact that my mouth was hanging open, and I laughed a little in awkward disbelief at my inability to contain myself. Any thoughts of distancing myself from her were forgotten. Her smile widened a little, and she spoke again.

"That's better. Now come on, sweetheart, indulge me. Whereabouts do you live?"

This time I answered right away, surprising myself with my eagerness. Words tumbled out of me all at once; I told her the name of the area I lived in, how many stops away it was, that I lived alone in a one-bedroom student flat, and before I could stop myself, I'd even told her the name of the street it was on. It must have been because of the way that with every detail I offered, I received an extra-pleasurable pulse, and chasing that high was just about all I could concentrate on.

"There, that wasn't so bad, was it? Thank you so much for telling me." Another particularly intense pulse, as if in gratitude, and my breathing deepened. "Now, a student place, was it? What are you studying?"

Over the next few minutes, I engaged in the lengthiest conversation with a stranger I'd had in a long time, one-sided though it was. I didn't speak unless prompted, but when I did, I said as much as I could, the rewarding pulses spurring me on. By the time it was over, she knew the name of my course, what modules I was taking, the fact that I'd travelled quite a distance across the country from my parents to study, where I liked to go for fun -- closely guarded personal details poured from me easily like warm syrup.

I wasn't cognisant of how unusual the scene was. With her hand alternating between stroking my cheek and playing with my hair sticking out from under my woollen beanie, and me unwittingly sliding closer to her as we talked, it must have been quite a romantic image, but I was beyond the level of self-awareness needed to realise that. Languid minutes rolled by, but finally, with a slight crease of her brow, she looked past me and sighed.

"Looks like your bus is here." She took her hand from me, and it was both a relief and a disappointment. "It was wonderful talking to you. When I noticed you, I just had to come and chat. I'll be seeing you!"

As she left, the still fading pulses kept me from turning away from her and my eyes ran her up and down one last time, until the bus stopped beside me with a hiss, and I turned to get on, blinking as if waking up.

It took until I was halfway home before I felt entirely normal again.

What the hell was that? Was I maybe... Kind of into her just now?

It would be a strange way to discover I wasn't entirely straight, but I struggled to find another reason for my behaviour. I realised I'd probably be able to confirm whether or not I was attracted to her soon enough as I'd almost certainly be seeing her again, shuddering as I remembered how much information I'd revealed to her.

I couldn't have picked a worse person to crush on; now that I had some distance the potentially disturbing nature of her questioning became clear to me. Regardless of any infatuation, if she showed up at my flat or on campus, I would have to get rid of her. However, there was nothing to be done for now but to put it out of my mind. I still had plenty to be getting on with this evening, and I wouldn't let that woman occupy my thoughts.

---

I dropped my keys on the sideboard in my bedroom with an obnoxious rattle and slumped into my beaten-up second-hand computer chair with a sour look on my face. For the first time I was regretting living alone. Up until that point I was only grateful to have my own space; the barebones nature of the place hadn't bothered me at all. On that day, however, the dim lights, the rattling windows, and the sight of my lonely collection of shoes in the doorway depressed me. There was a cold, churning feeling in my gut. I tried to shake it off and flicked on the small electric heater to my side -- I needed to get in the frame of mind to work.

I opened my laptop and waited the torturous minutes for it to properly start up. The feeling wasn't leaving me, in fact it seemed to be getting worse the more I tried to focus on thinking about work. I rubbed the bridge of my nose in frustration, trying to summon the hard-grafting mindset that had me on track to a first-class degree, muttering 'Come on, come on...' under my breath as I listened to the little machine strain.

Finally, all the icons on the desktop and the taskbar finished loading. I popped in my speakers to the headphone jack and put on some music, and then navigated through folders to reach the already endless column of words that was my dissertation. As I scrolled down the page the gnawing anxiety within me grew more and more. I had to summon some energy to quash it, and I shifted a little from side-to-side to the beat of the song -- and then paused as I felt something in my hips.

That warm pulsing -- much fainter than I had felt it at the bus-stop, but familiar, nonetheless. The knot in my stomach loosened a little as the pulses passed over it. I moved again, and felt the pulses respond. Embarrassed at first to be dancing alone in my chair, I continued to bounce slightly to the beat, allowing the warmth to disperse the cold so I could return to writing with confidence.

My movements were creating a feedback loop with the internal heat, I realised -- the little shock of each pulse caused me to move more, which caused more pulsing. Soon the awkwardness of my dancing had smoothed out into a proper rhythmic bumping and swaying. New pulses began from new points of origin on my body. I ran my hands up and down my arms, just allowing the dance take over the upper half of my body more than consciously willing it to happen. The heat of each pulse intensified, and I felt the ripples of it cross my brain once again.

Now fully distracted from my work and not at all aware of that fact, I found myself rising from my seat, pushing the ratty old chair aside to allow myself more freedom to move -- bigger movements to create better pulses. The spasms created by the pulsing almost seemed to have a purpose, and soon I was bumping and grinding in earnest there alone in my room -- completely out of character but feeling completely joyous.

Everything was wonderful. The room itself became brighter to me, as if the inadequate lighting of the dying bulb had become powerful enough to light everything in a happy orange glow. My arms entwined over my head, and I tossed my hair around my shoulders, flexing and gyrating my hips and enjoying the resultant physical feedback.

Enjoying it more and more, in fact. I began to feel the pleasure of the hot pulses in a new, more sensuous way. Grinding my hips was sending waves straight to the centre between them, and it was becoming the focal point where all the pulses and the hot sensations met. Beads of sweat began to form on my skin, and I hurriedly unzipped my hoody and pulled it off, followed by my top, dancing now in just my jeans and bra. Thoughts of how strange this was melted away as I ran my hands up and down my stomach and chest, soft moans escaping my parted lips as they brushed over my hot, heavy breasts.

My dancing began to slow to a sway as my hands took over the job of creating the fiery sensations. Was I controlling them as they teased my stomach above my jeans, or was it the pulses pushing them in a certain direction? My heat-addled brain couldn't process the question as my jeans were pulled over my hips and fell to the floor before I knew it. Suddenly I was so hot and trembly that my legs couldn't support my weight, and I stumbled and fell on to my bed.

Delirious, I slid backwards on the mattress, trailing a hand downward and under my panties. It was all I could do to focus on sexual fantasy, and I conjured up a scenario. Perhaps I had been dancing at a club -- not something I'd done since my first year -- and I had caught the eye of a handsome stranger. He would have been unable to resist approaching me, and I would have been eager to return his advances, enjoying the size of his body next to mine as we danced. Before long, we would be back here on my bed, his beautifully muscled masculine body imposing from above, his hands on either side of me as I watched a pearl of sweat glide down between his pecs-

Suddenly I was submerged in an icy numbness that froze me in place. I felt a kind of flat dread, a lack of sensation in my extremities -- a grey feeling. I began to panic, wanting nothing more than for my wonderful heat to return to me. Desperately I began to search my thoughts and memories for some source to pull it from, and then I found her. After all, it was with her that the feeling had started.

Sensation began to flow back into my limbs as I recalled minute details of our encounter -- the gentle but sure quality of her laugh and the way her lips parted a little as she smiled. Before I knew it my hand was moving again under my panties, slowly at first, but then speeding up as pulses ran from there throughout my body.

As the pulses reached my head once again, my recollection of the woman shifted into a new fantasy that seemed to organically create itself rather than following any script I wrote. She wasn't sat at a bus-stop, she was right there beside my bed, looking sideways at me. Her smile was in appreciation for what I was doing for her. Her eyes bore powerfully into my own as I got off for her viewing pleasure.

"Come on, sweetheart..."

My orgasm didn't build gradually as I was used to -- it took me by surprise, a series of far more powerful pulses that lifted my hips into the air. I lost control of my muscles and tossed and writhed on my back, and I didn't get hold of myself until the last of the intense aftershocks had passed.

My back now flat against the bed, my chest rising and falling deeply as I struggled to catch my breath, some semblance of regular thought began to return to me, and I wondered what on earth had just happened. However, that didn't last long as I drifted helpless into unconsciousness, not to awake until the following morning.

Chapter Two

Temperature? Fever? Delirium? I was trying to decide how to account for the previous day's episodes. If I was sick, then I shouldn't attend classes that day -- and yet I felt perfectly fine now. Besides, who had ever heard of a fever making you horny? It seemed absurd, and yet to let go of that theory left me with no explanation whatsoever.

In the end, I decided to get ready and see how I felt after that. If I sat on the edge of my bed thinking about it all day, then class would pass me by, and it would become a moot point.

The everyday morning rituals were a little more pleasurable than usual that day. After taming my bed-hair, brushing my teeth, and washing my face, I looked into the mirror and found that I liked what I saw. Normally I paid little-to-no mind to my reflection, especially on days like today when all I had to do was sit in a lecture room, but today I suddenly appreciated -

Y'know, that's a pretty face looking back at me there.

Heartening warmth bloomed in my chest and filled me. I decided that there was no reason to stay in today.

Returning from the bathroom to the bedroom still in my pyjamas, I lifted the comfortable sweatpants I had laid out on my chair the previous day, and then froze, frowning to myself. Somehow with the good feelings I had going about my appearance it felt wrong to bury myself in my usual drab clothing. Previously I had fully intended to use every opportunity I had to dress comfortably before I had to submit to real working life and it's dress-codes, but how comfortable could I really be if I didn't feel good about how I looked? The material felt cold and coarse in my hands. I dropped it and turned to my chest of drawers.

Soon enough, I was turning and posing in front of my long mirror, hands on hips and with a smile on my face. Adorned in a knee-length denim skirt and a cute tight black t-shirt with a starry design on the chest, I knew I'd made the right decision -- warmth rose within me with each heartbeat as I admired myself. I wore thick tights to make up for wearing a skirt in winter, but with the internal heat of my self-satisfaction I wondered whether I'd even need them. Perhaps next time I'd wear something more sheer - with my new appreciation for myself I knew I had legs to show off.

I glanced at my phone -- time to get a move on. I applied foundation and a little concealer to my face, usually all the make-up I bothered with, and then after a moment's thought I picked up a pink nude shade lipstick and put that on too. As I dabbed at them, my lips tingled with warmth. I couldn't help but take another thirty seconds to smile at my reflection some more. Finally, I zipped myself into my coat, swung my purse over my shoulder and set off at a brisk walk.

---

I still had a bounce in my step as I entered the stuffy lecture room with my coat over my arm. I felt a couple of glances in my direction as I crossed the room to my usual spot, and instead of feeling anxious and scrutinised as I normally did, I felt buoyed by the attention, certain that the looks were admiring instead of sneering.

"Hey Eirin." I said, taking my seat next to the girl who had been a firm friend since we met in first year and dumping my coat on the floor at my feet. Buried in her notes, she hadn't noticed me until I spoke, and blinked exaggeratedly behind her glasses as she spun to look at me. She recovered quickly and settled into her usual sardonic smile, responding in her deep and slightly nasal voice.

"Hi. Less than quarter attendance this time, it seems." She scanned the room meaningfully. "Heard the fuckboy squad threw a mid-week party last night, that's probably why. How are any of them going to complete this course?" She snorted in disbelief. I chuckled in response -- complaining about our peers was one of our favourite pastimes.

She looked back at me, and blinked again, finally noticing that I had dressed up a little. "Ah, uh... You look nice today." Her speech was halting and awkward, and her eyes turned back to her desk. I supposed it was because she was unused to talking about much outside of work. I felt a little blush in my cheeks at the compliment.

"Thanks, you do too."

As I gave the automatic response, I realised how true it was. I had never thought of Eirin as cute before, but now that word occurred to me so obviously as I looked her over -- she was quite a bit smaller than me, with a round face always clad in rectangular glasses, and often partially covered by untidy black hair. She looked so slight and dainty to me at that moment, even bundled up in her thick sweater and loose jeans.

Definitely cute.

My blush deepened slightly, those little warm pulses evident again -- it seemed this new wrinkle in my sexuality was not ironing itself out.