Her Mind Games: A Dark and Erotic Paranormal Romance Read online

  HER MIND GAMES

  MIND GAMES #2

  A DARK AND EROTIC PARANORMAL ROMANCE

  Copyright © 2015 Rachel Dunning.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  Cover Design, Copyright 2015 Rachel Dunning

  Smashwords Edition.

  ISBN: 9781311012333

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Also by Rachel Dunning:

  His Mind Games, Mind Games #1

  Johnny, #1 Johnny Series

  Losing Johnny, #2 Johnny Series

  Taking Johnny, #3 Johnny Series

  Finding North, #1 Naïve Mistakes Series

  East Rising, #2 Naïve Mistakes Series

  West-End Boys, #3 Naïve Mistakes Series

  Deep South, #4 Naïve Mistakes Series

  Red-Hot Blues, Standalone Novel

  Like You, #1 Perfectly Flawed Series

  Know Me, #1 Truthful Lies

  Find Me, #2 Truthful Lies

  Need Me, #3 Truthful Lies

  Christmas Comfort, #1 Hot Holidays Series

  Easter Sundae, #2 Hot Holidays Series

  Girl-Nerds Like it Harder, #1 Girl-Nerd Series

  Girl Nerds Like it Faster, #2 Girl-Nerd Series

  Girl-Nerds Like it Deeper, #3 Girl-Nerd Series

  Girl-Nerds Like it Longer, #4 Girl-Nerd Series

  For news of upcoming releases, visit:

  http://racheldunningauthor.blogspot.com

  Or connect with me on Facebook:

  http://bit.ly/RachelDunning

  Table of Contents

  CONTENT WARNING

  FOREWORD

  PART ONE

  ~ Crystal ~

  -1-

  -2-

  -3-

  -4-

  -5-

  PART TWO

  ~ Luke ~

  -6-

  -7-

  -8-

  -9-

  -10-

  -11-

  -12-

  PART THREE

  ~ Luke ~

  -13-

  -14-

  ~ Crystal ~

  -15-

  -16-

  -17-

  -18-

  -19-

  -20-

  PART FOUR

  ~ Crystal ~

  -21-

  -22-

  ~ Luke ~

  -23-

  ~ Crystal ~

  -24-

  ~ Luke ~

  -25-

  -26-

  ~ Crystal ~

  -27-

  ~ Luke ~

  -28-

  ~ Crystal ~

  -29-

  -30-

  ~ Luke ~

  -31-

  EPILOGUE

  ~ Crystal ~

  -32-

  Book Three? Four?

  CONTENT WARNING

  This book contains explicit sexual content, violence and strong language. Only appropriate for readers aged 17 and older.

  FOREWORD

  No effort has been made to make Book Two stand on its own. If you haven’t yet read Mind Games #1, His Mind Games, you should probably do that now.

  PART ONE

  ~ Crystal ~

  -1-

  Shira was fascinated with demons. Although she had never been trapped by one, my stories of Jack intrigued her.

  It bothered me.

  I didn’t like reminiscing on the cruelty with which he had destroyed my inner world, the one I had been working to create since I was a child; since Raymond Southport had stuck his mental fingers inside my pussy before I even knew what a pussy was.

  Thinking back to how my crystal-blue lake had been turned into a thick mass of viscous blood sent terrors throughout my body.

  But Shira had no sensitivity to this. When we sat in her parlor, sipping on a glass of aged Merlot and talking, the conversation would more often than not veer off into what Jack was like, where did he live, did I still feel weaker from having had my powers sucked dry by him?

  I never told her about my conversation with Luke, the revelations of the war between demons and witches, and how the hunters were there to protect us. And every time she asked me about Jack, I remembered Luke’s analogy: When people get told the world’s about to end, they go home and pop open a beer and watch a movie on TV and forget about it.

  I had suggested telling the witches about the hunters’ plan, to get their support, but telling Shira something like this would have only resulted in ridicule from her.

  I loved her. She was my closest friend and mentor, but certain ideas of hers were fixed. She was the most powerful witch I knew, she had protective barriers in her home that prevented its destruction by other witches or the full execution of their powers when confined by those barriers; she had worlds within worlds within worlds in her mind that I had visited and walked in. Visiting her inner worlds was like going to an intergalactic Disney Land, replete with interplanetary merry-go-rounds and swings and supernova lights and magic. She was an artist, a perfectionist. None of her inner worlds interfered with each other, all confined within tremendous walls in themselves, and often I’d find myself pulled into one of them while we were talking, so that we were no longer sitting on two couches with the pool behind us, but in a spray of light and greenery with naked men and women serving us chocolate drinks and coffees.

  Shira’s inner worlds were filled with men, seductive men that were all “figments of her imagination.” None of them were real. “And I prefer the real thing,” Shira would say.

  I was the only one who could enter these worlds with her. Ronald and Jackson and Jamie were her lovers in the real world. Did her lovers enter her world when she fucked them? It’s a question I never asked.

  In addition to her fascination with Jack, the other thing that had started bothering me about her was the lustful heat I was feeling from her lately. Talya had alluded to it in the past, that Shira would put ideas into my head and change my perception of her from a friend to a lover. I didn’t believe it.

  I had been apprenticing under her for three months now, my fourth month in LA. I had learned to move things with my mind, protect my inner world from destruction by the erection of my own walls which couldn’t be taken down by an atom bomb. I was starting to predict things, just slightly, getting a sense for what might happen in the near future based off the emotions and impressions received by people in my vicinity. I was making her a fortune for her in investments, and I was feeling stronger every day. I couldn’t shoot flames from my fingers and conjure up lightning, but I knew this was possible. An acquaintance of hers, Karolyna, was able to generate lightning. “But she can do little else,” Shira said. And then there was Lavoya, another woman I hadn’t met yet, but who apparently had access to seismic phenomena. “Most witches have only one main area of strength,” she said. “But you, Crystal, your potential seems...unlimited.”

  Luke had told me a similar thing.

  I was supposed to be this super-duper world saver with untapped powers that reached to the core of the earth and up to the moon. It didn’t feel like it. I made progress at a snail’s pace. There was no manual, no rituals, no nothing. There was only this “inner sense”
that witches have, but it seemed the only time I delved deep into that Well of Knowledge and actually used that inner sense was when I was in grave danger of death. I hadn’t been in grave danger of death since Shira’s lover, Talya, had suspended me from thirty feet upside down and then dropped me. And even then I wasn’t able to come up with the power to move things with my mind until Shira had the bitch pinned down and started killing her in front of my eyes!

  Ironic. I couldn’t find the strength to save myself, but I managed to save the cow who had tried to kill me.

  Shira was teaching me to break down walls in the worlds of other witches, and she and I played games. She’d erect a wall in her mind, and have me try and break it by the time I left for the day—either by telling her what she had been thinking, or breaking into one of her worlds that she had created and simply presenting myself to her in her mind.

  On many days, I felt all I was doing was making Shira a fortune and then going home having learned nothing.

  But it was still better than going out for beers with Vera and Sexy Gina or Model Richelle. Shira was the only other person of my kind that I knew and that I liked. Just being around her kept me calm, gave me hope.

  I thought of Luke all the time. And the thoughts of him had become desperate and frustrated. I wasn’t attracted to men in real life, and yet this boy, man, who I had met in my head had me so hot that four nights out of seven I was touching myself while thinking of him. I still remembered how he had entered me in my inner world, how he had told me that he might forget our encounters...

  But I didn’t forget. I remembered every detail as if it had happened yesterday, in this very room. I could feel him entering me, and I could feel his own nerves as they had singed and burned at the moment of climax.

  It drove me wild.

  My inner sense told me that I needed to stay in LA. There was more to be learned here. If I was the only hope for the survival of witches and needed to face up to the demon which was Jack, I sure as fuck wasn’t going to manage it with a few mind tricks and a little bit of telekinesis.

  It wasn’t a humanitarian goal (witchitarian?), my own survival was as much at risk as all the other witches’. And Jack’s words played ever in my mind, the words he’d said to me when I had fled Marfa: You can run, Crystal, but you will never, ever hide from me. And: Your time will come.

  It was three months since I’d known Shira when things started to get weird. It was in that month that I started to understand a little about her weakness. It is this weakness the demons use to hunt us down and take us over.

  Shira’s weakness was sex.

  Perhaps I was exuding thoughts of frustration because of my desires for Luke. But I don’t think it was that. I think she would have come for me regardless of that.

  The first advances were open enough. We were in the parlor during one of our many conversations, and she broached the subject casually, asking me directly if I’d be interested in sleeping with her.

  I was a little stunned, but she waited it out and let me catch my breath before speaking again.

  I’ve never been into girls (although I’d been hit on plenty in LA by some), haven’t even kissed one which apparently is something lots of girls do. But when I had discovered that Vera, Shira’s ex lover, had been interested in me, I had been flattered. Vera’s emotions had been pure and soft.

  Shira was different. It doesn’t help that she and I were so in tune, that our mutual power put us almost in complete communication with each other on a telepathic level. Had it not been for the walls she had taught me to erect, she would have known everything about Luke—Lucien—and probably upbraided me for it as well, hunters being considered nothing more than slaves in her mind.

  But she wasn’t putting a wall up for her desires for me now. Had she had these desires all along and only been hiding them? Or were they new?

  I felt those desires along with her offer of sex. I felt them like a heat wave. And it was suffocating.

  “I—uhm—I... You know I’m not into girls, right?” I said.

  “I know,” she said, taking a sip of wine. “But I am...”

  I said nothing. She was polite enough to not feel me up in her head, and that conversation came to a grinding halt.

  She started dressing more casually when I was at her house, exposing just a little more of her golden skin than usual.

  She was a truly beautiful woman, and I could appreciate that beauty on an aesthetic level. She reminded me of a deity. She still does (except for what she would look like on that final day when Jack took her).

  But there was no attraction on my side. None.

  It was shortly after that when I got hit with the full brunt of her desire, her addiction, and her power. And it was also here where I truly got to understand the meaning of slave.

  It happened in the parlor.

  And Ronald the Chippendale Butler was there.

  Naked.

  -2-

  I found her dressed in a babydoll in the parlor, her one leg on the glass table, her other stretched out on the couch. She was eating cherries from a platter held to her by Ronald who wore nothing but a bowtie.

  He stood next to her, and her left hand stroked his massive cock gently and slowly while she ate her cherries.

  In her mind, she had six-foot-thick walls up so that I had no idea what she was planning or thinking.

  I believed at the time that I had walked into the parlor by chance, by mistake. But I know better now. She had lured me there, with a thought as soft as a feather, an idea of no consequence; and idea of the ilk, I wonder what the pool looks like from here. Something ridiculous like that. I had seen the pool many times, and I felt like a fool for having the thought planted in my head so delicately.

  I was so shocked by what I saw that that I simply stood there, stunned, unmoving, staring at the both of them, not saying a word. Her hand kept moving up and down slowly over Ronald’s ginormous shaft, and from the looks of it, she had been doing it for some time. He was red and pulsing, every muscle on his body hard and tensed, as if it took every iota of strength from him to hold himself steady. He had the appearance of a Greek God, and if I hadn’t been in a “relationship” with Luke, I would have been most definitely turned on by the look of the man. I’m a woman, after all.

  Shira licked a cherry seductively with her tongue. Her skin gleamed with sweat, her hair disheveled. Her wide-open legs exposed the swollen hills of her aroused labia. There were beads of moisture seeping from her down there, little tiny droplets of readiness.

  “Although it is not required,” she said, moving her hand up and down Ronald’s cock, licking the cherry, “you are welcome, most welcome, to join us, Crystal. It would be an adventure, a maddening adventure, for you and I.” Ronald’s abs tightened. He made a slight groan and the tray in his hands shivered. Her hand slid up over the tip of him, playing with him, sliding down lower with her long white nails peeking out like...like...like a witch’s nails.

  “Yes,” she said smoothly. “Exactly like that.”

  I hadn’t protected the thought.

  It’s the shock, I realized. My thoughts are not my own because she’s stunned me into dropping every protection I had erected in my mind.

  It felt like two hands were on either side of my head, forcing me to keep looking at them. You’re in my head, Shira. The more I tried to avoid the scene, the more every detail seemed to scream out at me. She’s putting the details in my head, I realized. She wants me to see her spreading his moisture over him. What he tastes like...

  I threw up a wall as fast as I could.

  But she shot it to smithereens. “Don’t fight me, Crystal. In this world”—she kept on caressing him—“you have choices. In the inner world, you are my student. If I want to put an image in your head, I have a reason for it.” She put the images deep into me, the image of her lips as they surrounded his massive girth, his flavor, the rib of his ginormous vein under her tongue.

  “Not interested?” she asked me
, stopping the caress for a second. “I understand you’re not into women, but Ronald here is a virile and willing man. And I can assure you”—she licked her lips—“he is a god in bed.” She smiled.

  “I’m not interested, Shira.”

  I felt her arousal ease, and sensed the faintest prick of anger from her. She moved her right hand away from the cherries and slid her middle finger between her wet folds, not quite inside, but she was so swollen the fingertip was all but swallowed between them. She rubbed side to side, leaned her head back, groaned. “Well,” she hushed, “go on then. I have no more use for you here.”

  Her words stung.

  She masturbated violently then, and as I turned to leave, I saw Ronald bring his cock down to her mouth which she took into herself with mad voracity. He howled like an animal as I opened the front door to leave.

  I shot up the walls in my head harder than I had ever done before—they kept people out, and kept me in. I was using them now to keep her thoughts out of my head.

  It worked, I think.

  I like to believe that I had done it, and not that she had stopped working so hard with her mind to make me taste his flavor in her mouth, which she was actively doing right now.

  -3-

  There was a lesson to be learned in this, and whether Shira had planned it as a lesson, or if I simply dug it out of the Well as a result of the discomfort of the situation, the lesson still occurred.

  Nothing in my life has been a coincidence, not the major things at least.

  Remember Loquacious Rob? The guy who gave me a ride out of Marfa and then expected me to blow him or have him stick it up my ass like a shake-hands-thank-you-ma’am sign of gratitude? Remember how I circumvented that by digging deep down into the Well and finding the skill to put a thought into his head as if it had really happened, thereby leaving him “satisfied” and me disease-free?