Chapter 15

I was alive! I had superpowers! I felt death’s bony fingers around my throat!

The world around me looked like it was washed in vaseline: indistinct, ephemeral, elsewhere. My heart was pumping like I had run nonstop for weeks. Each breath was dry and cracked. My cock twitched angrily as Dove’s lips snapped off of my cockhead.

Lynsey ground the heel of her palm deeper into my solar plexus. I folded into the mattress.

None of that mattered.

The material was intangible.

The intangible was undisguised, raw, and at hand.

Lynsey was simple. The spinning plates of her mind were knitted and threaded with otherwise invisible strands up and down her spinning tower. The geometry was impossible, unless the threads were more like electric arcs, rolling around the surfaces of their connected dishes and not physical wires.

The metaphors were clunky, impossible.

I could see them all, minds in a bright kind of focus that made the day to day use of my powers feel like cloud watching on a foggy day.

Marie, her mind functioned the steadiest.

Ira, connections of worry were being choked out by a forceful press of her libido.

Paula, her sexuality was fighting back against her need to be included and helpful.

Lynsey, wild knots of rage were backed by a need to take over.

Vickie ... Was drunk. Her minds, sparking as they reached out for each other tumbling away from touch of the other. It was a mess.

Dove. Was worse.

She was broken, the axle, or the idea of an axle, that ran through the turn of her brain, needed to be hand cranked. She was doing it. For me. Though the effort made her whole and happy, she was going to burn out.

Step one.

I grabbed Dove by the brain as she slipped aside and Lynsey crab-walked between my knees.

I didn’t know how long I could be kept in this moment. I didn’t have time to waste, and yet every moment seemed impossibly long.

And all too short.

Dove turned and smiled at me as I grabbed her mind. She flitted her eyes around announcing what I had happily realized.

“He’s doing it! He’s only touching me!”

“Why’s he starting with that slut?” Paula grumbled.

“Looking for him to get under your hood and rewiring the ... Shit, I don’t know cars. Make you want to lick pussy?” Vickie managed through a sequence of hiccups and giggles.

“YES!” Paula said. “Oh my god, I can’t do it myself!”

“And I haven’t been having much success with you either!” Ira wrapped an arm over Paula’s shoulders. “Actually, I was hoping he’d bring out my inner cock-slut first.”

Dammit! I focused on Lynsey’s tongue rolling up the seam of my sac. I was slipping back out of the sweet spot. I could breathe. Lynsey’s hand had been in my–

Dove seemed to know what I was thinking, she leaned over the bed and pressed her knee at the bottom of my breastbone and leaned in.

Clarity.

Revenge.

I was gonna throw her down on the bed and fuck the ass off–

Her mind was in focus. The moment reached out forever. I just had to keep myself between breaths. The shallow quarter-lungfuls I could manage helped immeasurably.

I ran my mental fingers up and down Marie’s, Paula’s, and Lynsey’s minds. I had to see how they turned. Where was the motivation?

It was tied straight to libido. The need to carry on, succeed, try, act, all tied to the desire and urge to cum, to attract, to connect.

Dove’s was inhibited.

I needed to hold myself here.

I could see the machinery that made her go. I could see the break at the stem of her plates. The more I could see, the more I hated the metaphor. But it worked.

My speed measurements weren’t as clunky anymore. Lynsey was lowest, running at a four. But I could’ve mapped that out to fifteen decimal places. That would be a waste of time. Besides, I couldn’t drop back into this state everyday. Paula was next, dropping from where she had been, a nine, and about to plummet below Lynsey.

She gasped when I grabbed her mind.

The thorns, scythes, and cudgels at the connections between her self-image, her sexuality, her tolerance of female friends. Forcing those families of plates together had amassed a cancer of self-doubt, disgust, and guilt. It was wrenching her mind apart. If too much had built up like this, pushing her where her mind wouldn’t be led, she’d crack.

Like Vickie.

Like Kitty.

But I wanted her to be my girl, and it was easier if they would fuck together.

I didn’t think I could make her bisexual, not with just one little thing.

I ran my feelers in and out of Ira’s mind. There wasn’t some lesbian lightswitch to flick, a one size fits all solution to bring back to Paula.

Inspiration hit me. I didn’t need to make Paula attracted to women. I needed to blunt her resistance to the thoughts of disgust or distaste. I quickly swept away the mess I had left in her mind. I blinked, edging back. Paula rushed across the floor and apologized for stepping on Vickie’s shoulder. Paula’s mouth glomped onto my cock as Lynsey stared daggers up from my balls.

Right. They could feel it. They knew I was deep in their minds. In their hearts.

I think it was more than that. Their souls? Or was that too mystical? Was this magic? Science?

Those thoughts were a waste of the moment these girls were giving me. Dove leaned forward, most of the time there wasn’t much pressure on my chest. Paula slapped Dove’s ass and eased Dove off of my lungs.

Paula. Her mind was clear. Spinning without waste. I looked to the threads again. Insignificant strands of gossamer. Full bolts of furious lightning. Choking vines of wicked thorns. I focused in tightly.

I pulled thoughts, threads from other plates, weaving them together. It was as if each plate was the adjacent neighbor of every other. The metaphor failed repeatedly.

I found her sense of glee and excitement. The moments of her memories where she was conspiring with girlfriends, sisters, and classmates. I coated her wicked resistance with layers and layers of shared joy and fun.

She gasped.

‘You son of a bitch! That’s brilliant!”

“What’s he doing?”

“Give him a minute!” Lynsey interrupted everyone. The attention came off my balls and dick. The warm saliva tingled coolly with the air of the room. Dove kept me from tumbling back out of the state, but if I came, I was out of it too.

I was burning with impatience and I had to cut through my feelings to focus on my tools.

There would be fun, more fun, when I handled my shit.

Boys! Paula had been boy crazy since she was twelve. She had a tomboy phase before that. She didn’t look it. She was a skinny long-haired pretty girl. I guess she did dress in hoodies and jeans, but so did every college girl. I didn’t see her with makeup often.

Once, she had loved boys. Now, she loved men. She had picked her engineering degree because she didn’t want a class full of catty bitches. She kinda hated it that Marie and her few other female classmates had so quickly forged together their clique.

I didn’t need all that detail. I just needed her desire. That came off in ropes. Holy shit! Paula loved sex! I packed that love in on top of her moments of giggling friendship and shared secrets.

I hadn’t made her love girls.

I hadn’t stopped her from being batshit-thirsty for cock.

I had simply painted the fight in her mind a less combative color. Now, sex amongst my women, from Paula’s point of view, was teamwork, friendship, sharing secrets.

“Oh my god!” Paula said, falling back. Lynsey grabbed Paula’s elbow and heaved the redhead off the bed. Vickie was five-star frog splashed. She erupted in giggles and Paula laughed as well.

“Hey, I’m gonna give your pussy a try? OK Vick? Vickie? V!”

Vickie laughed.

“Don’t honk my boobs too loudly,” Vickie laughed harder and gasped for air.

I did it. Maybe a half measure, but I had cleaned the wedge in Paula’s mind. I had set her up so she wasn’t about to crack like an egg.

I shouted excitedly! I was so proud of myself! Lynsey scrambled back from my cock. Dove drove her knee in tighter. My self-adulation would’ve been enough to drop out of my mind.

“My jaw’s sore, Marie, get in there,” Lynsey said.

“He’s on to you next? You’re giving up without a fight?” Marie laughed, but she slipped herself between Lynsey and me as Lynsey clambered to her feet. Lynsey looked me in the eyes.

“He’d better be,” she said.

Well, can’t argue with that. I thought I would jump back to Ira but Lynsey had made demands that weren’t unreasonable. I would’ve smiled at Lynsey if I had any control of my muscles. I was all about the mind states. Lynsey. She was kinda built for the good girlfriend, supportive of the guy, buying into his idiosyncrasies. If she had as much confidence in her worth as I had back before I first reached into her mind, she’d have walked away.

But she let it happen.

Go on, get it out of your system.

But Vickie...

I could fall in love with Vickie and Lynsey knew it.

If she had known Kitty, Lynsey would have put up barriers against Kitty as well.

And if Marie hadn’t been dating Fox.

Or if she thought Paula would put up with me for more than a fling.

Ira was a lesbian. There shouldn’t have been a chance.

Avril was a user. Dove was cold inside. Those were the girls Lynsey was prepared to put up with.

But she shouldn’t have.

And I should’ve loved her enough to not need to.

Jesus! Lynsey was nervous, but her mind was put together so much better than Paula’s had been. Everything was in its place. If I wanted to really get her to pull her claws out, I needed to make a mess of things.

I frowned. I started to pull out.

“Do it!” Lynsey said.

“But–”

I was surprised I got the word out. I rasped and gasped. Marie was cupping my balls and arhythmically pumping my cock. The unpredictability of her handjob was what was keeping me from slumping into a finish.

How long have we been doing this?

They had learned techniques, allocated skill points, my cock was–

Lynsey grabbed my nose and jaw.

“Please, I want to fit in,” she said, eyes deeply staring into mine. “I don’t want to lose out on being in love. I can do it. You can help me.”

I nodded. She let go of my face and smiled as I looked into her mind again.

Paula I just had to wire things together. Vickie was enjoying my successes loudly. Lynsey was a different animal. She had fairy tale expectations of romance. She had childhood expectations. She had smart expectations. She had reasonable expectations. She knew which were which.

If I let her go, she’d find someone she was looking for.

I was that guy, apparently, last semester. I was that guy, until I was more than that guy.

She deserved that guy. I would be that guy.