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

  At the time, I had been desperate to survive. I hadn’t had time to think, to ponder, to freaking philosophize. I had simply needed a solution and then, bam!, it had come to me.

  But here’s the key thing: Have you wondered why I hadn’t simply put the idea into Loquacious Rob’s head that he should merely let me be and drop me off at the airport? Have you wondered why I hadn’t skipped the whole imagination-within-an-imagination scene of me going down on him?

  It wouldn’t have worked. I hadn’t known it at the time. At the time, I had simply dug deep into some primal reservoir of occult wisdom and done the right thing instinctively. But if I had put a thought in his head that we had simply had a nice freakin pow-wow and now he was just going to drop me off at the airport and give me a friendly pat on the shoulder, I would have ended up raped and dumped on the side of the road. I know this now.

  There’s a tricky lesson to manipulating minds: The idea has to already exist in the mind for you to do anything with it!

  Loquacious Rob had had zero interest in getting to know me as a person. Zilch. Nada.

  You can’t put something into someone’s head that is not already there. You have to use their desires against (or for) them. It just doesn’t work the other way. It’s a natural law. I am a product of my history. I did what I did to survive. It doesn’t mean I’m proud of what I am or what I’ve become.

  The point is this: I would have never “tasted” Ronald’s cock in my head if, deep down, some hidden desire in me hadn’t at least...wondered about it. If there hadn’t been even a seed of curiosity in me, she would have never gotten that impression into my mind using her own will.

  I wasn’t attracted to him. And I never did sleep or do anything sexual with him by the time I’d leave LA, in this world or any other one. But when Shira pushed the envelope and tried to get those desires, those sensations, into my mind, I felt them.

  Like I said, I’m a girl. He was...godly attractive. But I wasn’t ready to go down on him or bend over for him or anything like that. Of course there had been a desire in me, and the desire wasn’t buried so deep down. I think every woman on the planet would have had a desire for him. Did this make me bad?

  We all have our weaknesses. If I look deep in myself, part of mine is that I’m too trusting. Or maybe it’s that I cling to some semblance of humanity in me, that I fight the predestined nature of what witches are really like and what we naturally do.

  Probably Shira’s most brutal lesson which helped me weather the toughest of times with her was the simple statement she had made to me after Talya had dangled me from the ceiling with her mental hands: We are witches, Crystal. This is who we are. And this is what we do.

  I like to trust people. I didn’t want to become one of those cynical hags who didn’t trust anybody and dies alone in her stuffy room with a million bucks under the mattress and five cats under the bed—which cats she also didn’t trust. Maybe that’s my weakness. Shira’s weakness? It was sex. Hot, lustful, wanton, insatiable, carnal desire. She wanted it. She could have it because of her beauty. It’s because of that desire that she and I would eventually part ways. She wanted me. She probably wanted me more for the fact that I wasn’t interested in her, than for any other fact.

  I felt a deep depression as a result of her advance. She was a friend of mine, or so I had thought. Did she not know that this was pushing it too far? Was she only looking at me now as a toy or as a body to use for her pleasure—voyeuristic or actual?

  I got home to the apartment I was lodging at and sat on the bed thinking. A heartbreaking sadness engulfed me. I felt used, childish, foolish, young, naive. Had she used me as nothing more than a build-up for her sexual fantasies? No. I knew that wasn’t true. But whereas probing my interest was one thing, this was taking it too far.

  I thought of Luke, as I always did when things got rough. I wanted a normal life with him. Heck, I just wanted him. In the flesh. Right here on the bed. I didn’t want the responsibility that had been placed on my shoulders. I wanted to be a normal girl with normal problems. Vera and Richelle had been trying to hook me up with guys for months, and I’d turned them all down. I had no interest in them. None.

  Lucien “Luke” Dresner.

  I knew everything about him, all his fears, his desires, his passion.

  His love.

  We were connected, in a way neither of us understood.

  I missed him terribly.

  Was he out having sex with another girl because his real self didn’t know what his dream self was doing? I was willing to forgive that...to a degree. But if I had even the slightest inkling that he had finally remembered me for real and I found him in bed with another woman, I’d show him the full brunt of my telekinetic powers. On his most precious body parts.

  I was thinking all these things when Shira called.

  I almost didn’t answer.

  Was she calling to insult me further?

  Shira was not evil. I had met evil before, stared it in the face and seen its decadent eyes. But she was troubled. What a euphemism.

  It’s because I understood her basic goodness that I finally did answer. I’m glad I did.

  “Crystal! Oh, my gods, I’m glad you answered.” She sounded like she’d been crying. Her internal walls were down, and I felt the depth of her contrition all the way to my stomach. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m...so...sorry. I...pushed you too hard. I pushed you... I...please, come over to my house tomorrow. Come over. I promise, no more of that. I hoped... I hoped you were interested but...”

  “I’m not,” I said. “And it’s not only because you’re female, I’m not interested in anyone. I don’t want that, Shira. I want...” Luke. I protected the thought so she couldn’t sense it. “I just want to be...normal, Shira.”

  “You will never be normal, Crystal. You are so much more than normal. We can live among them.” Them. Her way of referring to “everyone else,” like dogs, perhaps. “We can live among them, but we are gods around them.”

  “You can’t do that to me again, Shira.”

  “I can’t promise you that, Crystal. I’m...attracted...to you.” Her words made me terribly uncomfortable. Terribly. Not only because she was a woman. A man saying the same thing would have engendered the same reaction in me. “But I promise you,” she continued, “that I will never force myself upon you in any way. In this world or in yours.”

  “What about in yours?” I asked pointedly.

  She hesitated a second before answering. “I’ve made you lose that much faith in me, to need me to spell it out in so many words? Oh, gods, what have I done?”

  “You have, Shira. You have.” Perhaps my other weakness is honesty.

  “I see,” she sighed. “And you’re right. You’re right. Oh, what have I done? I promise you I will never take advantage of you in any world. I promise you. But Crystal...I... Just come over tomorrow, OK? We’ll talk.”

  If I had not been confident enough of my powers, I would have denied her the opportunity. But the truth is, I was stronger. If I had been weaker, I would have felt Ronald’s cock all the way in my mouth...and maybe even partaken of the fuckfest. And who did I have to thank for that strength? Shira. Even just being in her house was invigorating. It was as if a cloud of power surrounded it, magic power. I remembered when I had first entered there, weak and weary from my encounter with the demon who calls himself Jack. I remembered how I could feel her every thought, the lust between her and Vera. I couldn’t do that out in the real world back then. But I could do it at her place, as if the house itself was a sanatorium of strength. And then there were the nightmares, the first month of being in LA and not sleeping for four weeks on end. She had gotten rid of those nightmares.

  I owed her at least a conversation.

  “O—OK,” I said. “OK, fine. I’ll be there.”

  I was expecting the same old Shira the next day, dressed up as if ready for an evening party on the red carpet, her sensual hair flowing in a long black pool down her back
, an expensive gown, and the Audrey Hepburn cigarette which was her trademark. She was a sensual woman by any standards.

  But what I got was so opposite, so different, so...normal, that I think I was even more shocked than when I’d seen her almost naked and with her finger in her cunt the day before.

  She was in a sweatsuit.

  Her hair was a mess.

  And she had bags underneath her eyes.

  She looked almost...human.

  “Crystal,” she said. Her voice reeked of regret. “Oh, Crystal, I’m so glad you’re here.” She strode toward me in the massive foyer. She was hugging me before I could resist. It was a warm hug, a friendly hug. She smelled of baby powder and soap, not of Chanel or Harrods as she usually did.

  “Come,” she said, pushing me into the parlor gently. “Come, dear, we must talk. I haven’t slept a wink for what I did to you.” Her head was bowed as she pushed me into the room that had been the scene of the crime the day before.

  There was no one else in the house. I sensed this clearly. In the four months I had been around, Jackson (the chef) and Ronald and Jamie (the gardener) were always here. Occasionally, Doctor Nolan Talwart, the fourth of the Chippendales crew, came by. (He held onto the title Doctor even though he was forbidden from practicing general medicine anymore.)

  But now it was empty. Only us two.

  Her hair was bedraggled. She had no make-up on, and even though she had the kind of skin that doesn’t need make-up, her skin looked clammy and almost bloated. “I had a terrible night,” she said. “Please, sit.” I avoided the couch she’d been sitting on nearly naked yesterday, and picked a one-seater with its back to the pool.

  She looked...almost chubby in her baggy sweats. “You had me up all night,” she said.

  Me!

  She ran a hand through her hair. She had the aura of a woman who’d just caught her husband balls deep in the secretary and then gone through a painful divorce.

  She inhaled deeply. “Drink?” she asked. It was ten AM.

  I shook my head. She grabbed a bottle of brandy from the bar and sat back down.

  It must be serious for her to be drinking that. She never drank anything stronger than wine because it reduces our abilities to think and use our powers.

  She poured a glass and downed it rapidly, poured another one. “How do I tell you this?” she said.

  And then she did tell me. She told me her darkest secret, her weakness, the thing that clouded her mind so forcefully that it was like a drug, her own personal heroin.

  She told me about her addiction to sex.

  And about her demon lover.

  -4-

  “I had a demon as a lover once,” she said.

  It was said so coolly, so calmly, that at first I didn’t get it. And then the rage formed inside me, the rage of betrayal. “You told me you’d never met a demon,” I accused.

  “No. I said I’ve never been in the clutches of one. Which I haven’t been. I was not drained in any way. If anything, I grew stronger.”

  I stayed silent, waiting for answers.

  “Perhaps he was an incubus,” she said. “You know what that is?”

  I shook my head.

  “A creature from the underworld,” she said, “who sleeps with woman in their sleep. But this was no rape. If anything, it was I who used him.

  “We met in my inner world. I don’t know how he found me. One day I was sitting on the London Eye in a dream and then he just suddenly appeared next to me. I was asleep. It was a dream, but I knew it was no dream. I was already familiar enough with my powers to know that.

  “He was a handsome devil, black hair and rebel clothes. He had a barbed wire tattoo around his neck. Several earrings. The fiend made my blood boil, and I gave myself to him right up top there, no questions asked, all of London sprawling below us like a faraway dream.

  “The sex was maddening. I screamed and howled and cried for mercy when I felt the claws of his spawn fill me. It was then that I knew what he was. No man has seed like that. It burned inside me, a hot fire of lava and lust. His eyes glowed green as I took him, as I dug my nails into his neck and fed on him, my black hair splaying around his head as the orgasm rocked me and the Ferris wheel below me.

  “He never grew soft, and I was insatiable. The sun went down and he stayed inside me. My knees bruised as I continued to pump against him, rising and falling and feeling him ejaculate over and over inside me.

  “There was no love in the man, none at all. No softness or care or kindness. His fingers tore gashes in my back as I kept him linked to me. I sucked his life from him but the more he gave me, the more I wanted.

  “I felt the seed grow inside me. Not a child. A mist, an entity, a perceptive soul that had entered every pore of my skin and permeated each organ of my body. As well as my heart. And I mean that in the literal sense, not the romantic one. His seed was cocaine. It was fire. It was heroin. It was amphetamines and war. I felt like I would die from it. The world became hazy and still I rode him, ever in that same position, him sitting and me straddling him, not even having bothered to take off my dress. He fired and fired and fired into me—and each burst was ecstasy.

  “The horizon grew thin. The Thames became a black mirror and the London lights turned on like a million fireflies as the light of the sky disappeared.

  “My demon’s eyes grew ever greener, a malevolence inside them that cannot be described.

  “But I was hungry, lusting for his shock of pleasure, sucking the very life of him like some demonic vampire.

  “My own orgasms became painful eventually. It was fist after fist into my stomach of unending pleasure. But too much sweetness is nauseating.

  “Nevertheless, my hunger grew. It was neverending, desperate. A thirst for blood. Only it wasn’t blood. It was him, this power he was filling me with. It was a part of him I was taking.

  “The dream never ended. It just sort of...faded away. And I awoke, drained and tired and dead to the world. My pussy ached as if I had just fucked the entire Manchester United soccer team ten times. Which is probably about as many times as my demon and I did it.

  “And I felt it inside me, the strength, in my stomach, my womb, all through me.

  “I had a moment of panic, I confess. I thought I had been given the spawn of a devil and that I would give life to a monstrosity in nine months.

  “Perhaps I was indeed carrying a devil. But I will never know.”

  She took a swig of brandy, sucked in a deep breath. Her skin had grown pallid as she readied herself to tell me the next thing.

  “The blood down my legs came almost immediately afterwards. So much of it. Such terrible, terrible redness pouring from me as I expelled whatever had been inside me.

  “It was a miscarriage. Time is different in the inner world. I might have been three months pregnant by the time I woke up for all I know.

  “I wept. The sorrow was so deep that I couldn’t bear to face myself in the mirror for days.

  “I had Ronald already by then, and he kept me comfort. It was the first time he had done it for me. Before, he had only been a butler that I liked to feast my eyes on.

  “But now...I needed lust. I needed comfort. I needed...passion.

  “I needed what no man could give me, no witch. I needed...a demon.

  “He never returned, my man in black with the barbed wire tattoo. I never discovered his name. Never discovered his purpose. You speak of hunters, Crystal. You speak of witches who are too weak that they need a man or woman to save them from distress. In my case, I never needed that. The demon didn’t take from me. I took from it. I took and I took and I took and I took.

  “All I had left of him was the entity in my womb. And even that was gone. Perhaps I had been an experiment on their part, to see what would happen if they mated with a witch. Perhaps. It’s all a theory.

  “I looked for him, hunted for him in the dreamworld, in my inner world. I created world after world after world of beauty and blackness alike, just
to find him again. I soared to the top of the London Eye easily a thousand times in my mind.

  “He never returned.

  “But this hunger... This hunger he made me discover. It’s always there, every day, all day—men, women, groups, chains, whips, anything, anything. The need never goes away, the thought of me with him—with it—up at that soaring altitude, getting my brains fucked out—it never goes away.

  “The need had existed in me all the time, even before the demon. As a young girl, I was a promiscuous slut, and I never shagged the losers, always the bulky men, the sports stars, the cheerleaders. It had always been inside me.

  “But the need had never burned so much in me as it has since that night. I fight it every day now. It’s not merely an obsession, it’s oxygen. It’s life itself.

  “Ronald and Jackson and Jamie—they can’t keep up with me, Crystal. I’m in their heads. They know it, in a way. They are not entirely slaves. But it’s too much for them, too overwhelming. My orgasms are...cosmic phenomena for them. Humans. They can’t deal with it. So I have to build walls around what we do, so that they don’t remember it. They would lose their minds if they remembered it. And I have to build walls around...some of the things I ask them to do for me. They would never consent to some of it.

  “But the yearning stays. It stays and stays and stays and never goes away. An endless thirst that cannot be sated. I know how to crack mental walls with a look of the eye, how to put thoughts into people’s minds, how to create worlds that even humans can partake in to a degree—but I can’t stop this burning inside me. It’s not an itch, it’s a mutant mosquito bite the size of a crater.

  “I’ve fought it with you, Crystal. And, in fact, part of what drew me to you so forcefully is that you seemed to have a soothing power inside you. I felt it. Ronald and the boys felt it. They didn’t mention it, but I sensed it in them. You actually turned that parched thirst into nothing but a slight desire to wet my lips.

  “Life became bearable with you around. You and I talked. We shared wine.