The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Somewhere in Middle America, Friday afternoon

The Astronomy Club fanned out across the field. It was their third one of the day, and still no sign of the meteorite that allegedly crashed down to Earth on Wednesday. It was hot for October, an unpleasant change in the weather, and everyone was miserable. Any excitement they shared on the ride over from the college was gone now. Their shared adventure had quickly become just another slog. Take a step, scan the ground, take a step, scan the ground.

The fact that Paul was slightly hung over didn’t help matters.

He looked to his left and right. Bob and Khan were both plodding along heroically, eyes glued to the ground. If anyone was going to find the Kenneyville Space Rock today, it was probably going to be one of them. Not that it mattered. They all knew that Professor Richards was going to claim the find as his own, no matter whose hands actually picked up the thing. That’s the Richards Space Rock you’re holding, young man.

Paul’s reverie was broken by the thump of his foot colliding with something. “That’s weird.” He should have seen anything sticking up, or punched down into the dirt. That was the whole point of walking the field. Maybe he was more hung over than he thought. Maybe he was just bored. Maybe astronomy wasn’t the major for—

He looked down again. There was an object hidden inside a tuft of grass. Something shiny and iridescent. He picked it up.

Someone’s cell phone?

Whatever it was, it was flat and thin and rectangular, with a black screen on the front and that shiny iridescent casing on the back. No markings. No buttons, either. He tapped the screen, but nothing happened. How the hell can there be no buttons? Curious and feeling a little foolish, he held the object to his face. “Phone, turn on.” He looked. Still nothing.

Who loses a nice cell phone out here in the middle of nowhere? That sucks.

“PAUL! Catch up, buddy!” Professor Richards was fast approaching, stomping through the grass without paying the slightest attention to what might be embedded in it. Looking around, Paul quickly deduced that he was in trouble. The rest of the club members were either standing in a group at the edge of the field, or just minutes away from finishing their ‘sweep’ and joining them. Paul, meanwhile, was dawdling in the middle of the field, an easy and obvious target.

“I’m on it,” he volunteered, but the words meant little to him or Professor Richards. The teacher continued to head in his direction. Sighing, Paul tucked the phone? into his pocket and continued the march, his mind as far away from space rocks as it could possibly be. If he could get the thing to turn on, he could probably call someone on its contact list, maybe track the owner down. It looked like the kind of phone a hot sorority girl would use.

“Oh, thank you so much! Oh my God you are so amazing!” She was as beautiful as he dared imagine. Her arm slipped around his. You’re my hero. You have really pretty eyes, too. Are you doing anything tonight? Because I’d like to go back to my dorm room and fuck you six ways from—”

“Paul!”

The gorgeous blonde from his imagination vanished, replaced by a very annoyed and very middle-aged college professor. “Paul! No wonder we haven’t found that meteorite, if this is the kind of effort you’re going to bring with you.”

“I’m sorry,” he stammered. He was, sort of.

“What was that you picked up just now? A fragment?” Richards narrowed his eyes, suspicious and jealous. “Did you find a piece of it, Sorelli?”

“No.” Paul held out his empty hands as proof. “I thought it might have been… but, uh, it was just a piece of malachite. Totally Earthy.”

The professor’s face fell. “Fine,” he said, in a voice that made certain that he wasn’t fine with Paul, or Paul’s answer, or with the day in general. “Come on, you’re holding everyone up. Let’s get back to campus.”

In an hour they were back in the van, exhausted and disappointed. Maybe the meteor had broken up entirely. Worse yet, maybe someone had gotten there before them—they’d found fairly fresh tire tracks in the middle of one of the fields. Either way, the search for the Professor Arnold Richards Space Rock had come to a disappointing end.

Meanwhile

Nicole obeyed.

She woke up late on Friday, even though her alarm clock was blaring and sunlight streamed unimpeded through the opened shades. Did I pass out last night? She reached over and stopped the electronic screeching.

“Thank you, Jesus!” came a muffled voice through the wall.

Her face turned a bright red. “Sorry!”

The muffled voice said something too muffled to make out. Nicole slipped out of bed and into her robe, trying to make as little noise as possible. She padded down the hall to the shower room. Everything from the day before was still a blur. I was in English Lit, and then the library… did I eat? I had a meeting with Ms. Brown and then…

She turned the knobs and gasped as the cool water hit her face. No, that’s right. Ms. Brown wasn’t there. I waited and waited and she stood me up. Figures. First Charlie and now this. Grabbing the bar of soap, she moved her hands over her body, down her legs, over her breasts, over her arms, over her—

Bracelet.

She stared at the shiny, iridescent circle, trying to remember when she’d put it on. When she’d even bought it. It wasn’t like her to wear bracelets, or watches, or anything like that. They got caught on things. They banged against—

But I’ve had it for years. I just found it in a box of old stuff and decided to wear it again. It’s so pretty, isn’t it? So pretty. Just stare at it. Pretty, pretty colors. Washing over me. Spinning, faster, spinning, pretty, so pretty…

I hear, and obey.

She looked up. The soap suds that had covered her body were circling the drain now. How long was I standing there? I was thinking about… school?

“Fuuuuuck.” It came out louder than expected, the slur bouncing from surface to surface and through the thin walls.

“Fuck!” someone responded. Muffled laughter followed. Nicole’s outburst wasn’t the first time that someone had exploded in frustration in Hebron Hall, and it wasn’t by any means going to be the last. College, and its many frustrations, was a shared experience.

And she’d finally found the pretty bracelet she used to wear a long time ago. So at least there was that.

She finished the shower, wrapped herself in her towel, and headed back to her room. Behind her smile, something was troubling her. There was absolutely something else on her schedule that she absolutely had to do, but what?

“Whatever,” she said to her dorm room door, to anyone within earshot, to anyone who wasn’t. “I’ll figure it out eventually.” In the meantime, there was a 20-page report on Proust that wasn’t going to finish itself anytime soon.

Later that evening

“Exchange student,” Paul sighed, staring at the iridescent object that now consumed his attention. “Gotta be.”

He tapped the mystery phone for what seemed like the millionth time. Tapping it made it turn on, although he wasn’t exactly sure how that worked, either. Left alone for more than a minute, the phone shut itself off until he tapped the screen again. But that was as far as Paul had gotten with his plans to revive the phone and contact its beautiful sorority girl owner. Everything else about it was a total enigma, starting with the characters that filled the entire screen. They weren’t Japanese or Chinese. They didn’t look like anything from eastern Europe. Paul’s brief hope that they were Turkish was shot down in moments by a chuckling, head-shaking Khan, who’d grown up in Ankara.

But the weirdness went beyond that. The phone had no buttons or speakers. There was no branding on the front or back, no carrier symbol or signal bars. The only good thing was that there didn’t appear to be a password—turning on the phone took him right to the main screen, whatever that meant.

He glanced at the clock, and winced. Ten minutes to midnight, and he’d spent the entire afternoon and evening trying to figure this thing out. Ten minutes to midnight on a Friday and he was sitting alone in his dorm room fumbling with a phone instead of being out at that new pub on Market that didn’t card, trying to meet actual women.

His own phone—the one with a plan and a signal and a language that he understood—chirped twice. Checking it revealed two messages from Khan, one inviting him to a dorm party, the other asking him why he wasn’t there yet. Paul considered, then reconsidered. It was late, he had no clean clothes, and if he couldn’t even figure out a dumb cell phone, how was he going to figure out dating?

Gonna stay in tonite, his fingers tapped. Writing it made it real, and he resigned himself to yet another lonely night in the Men’s Dorm.

Kay. More booze n babes for me!

Doubtful! Dorm parties at Southern Wisconsin always ended the same way, broken up by humorless RAs or, in rowdy cases, by the cops. Either way, rushing off to join Khan wasn’t going to end with a girl in Paul’s bed.

U still fucking with that phone?

Yeah. Guilt sat heavily in his stomach. Going to a party would at least give him the chance to talk to someone, anyone, instead of being some kind of weird little hermit. But it was already past quiet hours and the party would be ending soon, and he didn’t have any clean clothes, anyway. “It is what it is,” he concluded, letting the words hang in the air, feeling thoroughly unsatisfied with them.

Whatever. His attention drifted back to the mystery phone. Aside from boredom, the thing that kept Paul going was a discovery he’d made an hour before—tapping different parts of the screen in a certain order would change the appearance of the screen, causing it to blink and then display an entirely new set of characters. Different tapping combinations made for different blinks and screens, but each was as dense and incomprehensible as the last.

Still, he kept poking.

Tap-tap, tap-tap-tap. One blink

Tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap. Another blink.

Tap-tap-tap, tap, tap-tap.

The phone buzzed once, then again. The screen blinked five times. “Oh, sweet,” Paul began, in a voice that was much louder he’d planned. He cringed, his hands threatening to squeeze the phone until it oozed between his fingers. It buzzed a final time, longer than before, then went back to being inert. A few seconds later, it shut itself off again.

“What? Aw, come on!” He tapped the screen again, and it took him to the same damn screen again. Again.

Somehow it had jumped ahead to nearly one, and he’d spent the entire afternoon slogging through farm fields in the hot sun. It was clearly time to collapse into bed, but… Okay, just another half hour of tinkering and then we’re done. I’ll drop it off at lost and found tomorrow. Done.

He wasn’t sure if he meant it, but it felt good to say the word. Done. Done and done.

Meanwhile

Nicole obeyed.

Alone in her room, fast asleep, dreaming of something rockets? that she’d forget in the morning.

Her eyes snapped open.

“I hear, and obey.”

Twenty minutes later

“Alright, that’s it. I give up.”

Ten minutes remained until Paul’s self-imposed quitting point, but he knew better than anyone that “another ten minutes” would quickly turn into an hour, then two, leaving him staring at the rising sun and wondering where the time went. He switched off his desk lamp, plunging the room into darkness and making the prospect of bedtime at least a little more real.

He set the phone down gently—it wasn’t quite at the point where he could mistreat it like his own—and pulled off his shirt. A shower was what he wanted, but it was late for that, and nerds like Erik were forever hassling anyone who violated dorm quiet hours. Indecision quickly set in, leaving him shivering in the cold, clad only in shorts, t-shirt still in his hands.

Fuck it. He’d go to bed dirty. Putting up with another scolding from Ron the Cool RA was more than he could take after such a long, bullshit day. Besides, it wasn’t like anyone was going to care if he smelled.

There was a knock at the door. One, two, three knocks. Then silence.

Paul froze, hands quietly twisting his t-shirt into a tightly-wound rope. Goddamn it Khan! Goddamn Men’s Dorm and these stupid fucking 1950s quiet hours! He waited for more knocking, or worse yet, drunken pounding, but the uncomfortable silence continued. Muttering to himself, he turned the desk lamp back on and walked to the door, fully expecting to find either his best friend drunk and looking to continue the party, or yet another confused kid from Umberto’s Pizza trying to track down a garbled delivery order. At least this time, if it proved to be the latter, Paul could send the guy away before he went around knocking on everyone else’s door as well.

“Look,” he began, without bothering to see who he was addressing. Did it matter? It didn’t. “It’s after hours, and nobody here ordered a pizza, so—”

Oooooooohhhh shit this is nooooot a pizza guy.

Standing in front of him was a gorgeous woman, barefoot, wearing nothing but some cute orange lingerie, staring at him without saying a word. Her skin still had goosebumps from the cold air outside.

“Um, can I help you?”

“I hear, and obey,” she said. That was it.

She hadn’t moved a single muscle, not to shift her weight, not to look around, not even to shiver, despite the cold. He looked at her face, which was peaceful and blank, as if she were still asleep. Is she wasted? Stoned? Sleepwalking?

All of those led to bad endings, and he began to feel sorry for her. Where the hell were her friends? Who let her just wander off like this? “Hey, are you, um, are you okay? Do you need to sit down?” He winced, afraid that he was sounding like a creep trying to lure her into his room. “Can I call someone for you?” There, that made up for it.

“I hear, and obey.”

Down the hall, a door creaked open. Paul instinctively knew which one it was. Panic began to set in, and he forgot about the girl and her hotness. If Erik saw anything…

“Hey, hey,” said Paul, more urgently than before. “You should come inside, it’s cold.” As he spoke, his ears searched in vain for footsteps. He heard nothing, but that didn’t mean much, as the hallway was carpeted. “You could get hypothermia dressed like that. Here, come in, I can get you a coat or a sweater or something.”

“I hear, and obey.”

She pushed past Paul and entered his room, coming to a stop at the foot of his bed. Her expression hadn’t changed one bit and now, to Paul’s chagrin, she had her back to him, staring at the concrete block wall. He closed his door as quietly as he could, hoping that anyone who might be wandering the halls wouldn’t notice it.

“What are you doing here?” The window. She could climb out the window. They were on the ground floor. Worst case, he could throw a coat over her shoulders and shove her out the window. Someone would find her wandering around soon enough.

“I was summoned.” Her voice was flat and even. “I hear, and obey.”

“Was the front door propped open again?”

“Yes. I hear, and obey.”

Of course it was. Then again, if the guys in the Men’s Dorm were better about security, this girl would still be standing outside in the cold. “You have to… look, if anyone sees you in here with me, we’re both fucked!” It was the kind of accusatory question that warranted a response of some kind—a protest, an apology, something—but the girl remained oblivious to it all. She stood ramrod straight, eyes unfocused.

“Yes. If anyone sees me in here with you, we’re both fucked. I hear, and I obey.”

Paul wasn’t sure how to react to that, but before he could think of a response, the awkward pause was broken by the unmistakable sound of a hand slapping against concrete, growing louder with each slap. Erik’s hand, most likely. Almost certainly.

“Paul?” Erik chose to speak at that moment, confirming all of Paul’s fears. “Hey, Paul! Got a moment?”

“I’m gettin’ ready for bed,” Paul called out, more for the benefit of anyone else listening in than for Erik himself. The more Paul could portray himself as a victim of his nosy dorm mate’s lack of personal boundaries, the better. “What do you want? It’s late, Erik.”

“Just want to ask you something quick. Open up, buddy.”

Paul opened the door a crack, just enough to see a grinning Erik waiting in the hallway, then closed it again. He turned to his oblivious guest. “Okay, shit,” he whispered. “Quick, um, get into my bed and hide under the covers. Pretend you’re not even here. If anyone asks questions, though, you’re my loving girlfriend and we’re spending an unplanned night together, okay? I’ll take care of the rest.”

“I hear, and obey.” She climbed into the bed and began pulling sheets over her body. Paul couldn’t help but stare at her toned legs as they slid under the covers. Hottest girl I’ll ever have in my bed, ever.

With one immediate problem taken care of, he turned to the other.

“Erik,” he said, allowing the door to swing open a few inches. Enough for Erik to see inside, but not enough to let him see inside. “Is this about the pizza guy? Those fucking drunks from Mitchell Hall sent him over here. I, um… I took care of him.”

“Looked like a girl to me, Paul.” Erik’s head bobbed up and down, trying to see over Paul’s shoulder and into the room beyond.

I’m dead. So dead. I’m going to live in a cardboard box behind Marin Hall. I’m going to freeze to death and freshmen will tell ghost stories about me. “Dude, it’s past midnight. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Rules are rules, man, and after ten, they gotta go home.”

“Look, there’s no one in here but me,” he protested. “Same as every other day.”

From behind him came a soft, pleasant moan. Erik grinned, the very picture of triumph.

“Okay, there’s someone here with me, but… it’s…. a dude, and… the dorm rules only say no women after ten, so you can just take that stupid old rule and…”

Erik’s eyes grew large. Oh great, I bet he hates gay people and I just told him I had a man in my bed. Gonna be a great semester now, he’ll be at my door every—

Paul’s eyes widened too, as he felt a pair of arms slide under his, and a body pressing against his back. “Mmmm, come back to bed, lover,” the woman cooed in his ear. She looked up at Erik and smiled. “Hey there.”

Erik stammered, his eyes glued to hers. “You’re… it’s… it’s after ten and…”

“Don’t worry sweetie, I won’t stay long. This was kinda unplanned. My car won’t start, and it’s way too late to get a hotel room, and I can’t take a taxi all the way back to my school.”

“But—”

The girl smiled and pressed a single, delicate finger into Erik’s chest. “I’ll be quiet, I promise. And it’s just one quick little visit, kay? Maybe we can all hang out tomorrow? I want to meet all of my boyfriend’s friends.”

“Rules are rules,” Erik protested, but Paul could tell that he was no match for the girl’s charms. Not that he could resist her, either. Her fingers God she’s got soft skin brushed across his chest, playfully toying with the tufts of hair they found there. He shifted his weight, hoping that no one would notice his full-blown erection.

“Just one night,” he said, in a voice that was half-gulp, half-plea. “I’ll make it up to you Erik, I promise.”

“We’ll make it up to you,” the girl added. “I promise.” She did the finger press again, this time letting her hand linger, index finger curling and uncurling.

As distracted as he was by the girl grinding against his eager body, Paul couldn’t help but marvel at how quickly her charms worked on Erik. The boy’s face rapidly shifted from shock, to annoyance, to shock again, before finally settling on confusion. Like Paul, Erik didn’t know what to make of this situation.

“Um, just be, um… just be quiet. I gotta study.” He looked to Paul, eager to get in a dig of some kind. “Some of us actually study around here, buddy.”

“I know, I know.” Paul was every kind of contrite. Whatever would make the problem go away the fastest.

“Thanks, Erik,” the girl purred. She buried her chin into Paul’s shoulder and smiled at his slovenly neighbor. “We’ll stop by tomorrow when you’re not so busy, okay?”

“F-f-fine,” Erik stammered. He turned and began to half-walk, half-run back to his own room. In spite of his sudden haste, and forever mindful of dorm rules, he caught the edge of his own door mid-slam and eased it closed. Internally, Paul shuddered at the thought of what Erik was about to spend the rest of the night doing.

“I hope he has Kleenex,” he muttered.

The girl finally released Paul from her grasp, angling around him until she was within reach of his door. “At last,” she said, tapping the edge of the door with her foot and letting it slam behind her. “I guess we’re both gonna be fucked.” Her foot traced miniature circles on Paul’s linoleum floor.

“Well. maybe not. Sometimes Erik just likes to screw with us. There was this one time when this guy down the hall had a—”

He was gesturing as he spoke, his arms spread wide as he pointed in the vague direction of Toby’s room. The girl chose that moment to launch herself at him, crashing into his chest and knocking him back to the edge of the bed. Panicking, he threw his arms forward to keep from falling backwards onto the bed, and before he knew it he was holding the mystery girl in his arms. She burrowed in further, sliding one hand behind the back of his head to hold it steady while she moved in for a series of deep, passionate kisses.

“MMmff!” The girl broke off just in time to prevent Paul from suffocating to death. Not that he would have minded dying that way. “I don’t…” shut up Paul shut UP. The small part of Paul’s brain that was still able to function came up with something sensible to say. “I-I’ve got condoms in the drawer.”

“Good. Because we’re both. Gonna. Get. Fucked.” She eyed the bulge in Paul’s pants and smiled. “Better hurry.”

Paul never moved so quickly in his life.

Later that night

The last time Paul slept with a girl was in high school, with the cute girl from Burger Heaven who liked to slip him free sodas when the manager wasn’t looking and who, on Paul’s eighteenth birthday, had allowed him to slip her something in return. It was the first time for both of them and they were both far too eager, but in the morning she’d smiled and kissed him and asked for a second date. A third and fourth followed, and suddenly Paul had himself a girlfriend.

They declared their endless love for one another, but it was bullshit, and they both knew it. Even as they cuddled on that humid July evening, promising to stick together through college and beyond, Paul looked into the warm, round face of Heather Crosby and saw a girl bound for Yale University and a future that didn’t involve coming back to Middle America to spend summers flipping burgers. Or flipping him, for that matter.

“There’s gonna be other girls,” she told him on the day she packed for Connecticut. “You’ll see. You’re so sweet, I bet all the girls at Southern Wisconsin will be all over you before orientation’s over.”

They hadn’t been, though, at least until now. At least until…

“I want you so fucking bad right now, holy fuck.” The brunette slipped out of her underwear in seconds and, with practiced ease and perfect accuracy, tossed the bra and panties onto the seat of Paul’s desk chair. Task completed, she ran her hands through her hair and pushed it all behind her shoulders. She was straddling Paul and breathing heavily, the goosebumps on her skin long since vanished. She looked down at him. “You got it?”

“I got it,” he replied, thanking God—and every other god—for muscle memory and for condoms that hadn’t expired. He’d spent more than a few nights up late, unable to sleep, worrying himself into insomnia that when the time came to have sex again, he’d have forgotten everything he learned from Heather. That the new girl would see that and know. But with the condom rolling on easily, he began to relax, and regained some of his long-lost confidence. ”You’re so hot”, he wanted to say, but Newly Confident Paul vetoed that idea, choosing to say nothing at all. Instead, he smiled and held her as she ground against him. He closed his eyes, sweaty and happy and about to oh fuck holy shit I forgot how… oh fuck!

He expected her to moan when he entered her—Heather had always moaned, long and low and guttural in a way that drove them both wild. Instead the girl sucked in a sharp breath and dug her hands into his shoulders, eyes squeezed shut. “I never,” she breathed, “had a… oh! Keep doing that, keep doing that!”

Paul had no clue what ‘that’ was, but he was apparently doing it and doing it well. She leaned in and kissed him again, her hair mingling with his, and he buried his face against her neck as they rocked. Something tickled his ear—it was her mouth, placing a kiss there and then, after a moment, a gentle nibble as well. She was also whispering something, her words half hidden by their collective gasps and mewls and the inevitable creaking of Paul’s bed frame. Ignoring his body, which by now was far more interested in other things, he attempted to concentrate so that he could make out what she was saying.

“Don’t stop. Hold on just… just a little… don’t stop.”

The thought of continuing to have sex with this gorgeous woman nearly made him cum right there and then, and he likely would have, had she not taken that moment to say something completely unexpected.

“O-obey.” She kissed his ear again. “Obey. Serve and obey. S-serve and… mmmmm… obey…”

“Obey?” She’s roll-playing, you moron, just shut up and let her fuck you!

She arched her back and closed her eyes, her hair drifting into her face as she rode him. “Pfft,” she spat, shaking her head as a strand of hair ventured too close to her open mouth. Paul had a sudden urge to brush the hair away himself, ever the gentleman, but she seized his hand as he raised it and pressed it against her breast. The annoyance that came with the “pfft” vanished, and she was all smiles again.

“I… I should’ve asked… if you… had a hair tie.” More hair drifted, and she threw her head back to clear it, closing her eyes as she did so. She kept them closed as she rode him.

“I have one?” Somewhere, in the bottom of a drawer.

“Mmmmm. S’ok.”

The bed beneath them was old, made of steel, and engineered to withstand the very sort of abuse they were now heaping upon it. Even so, the earlier rhythmic creaking gave way to a cacophonous riot of groaning metal and compressed springs, as if the bed itself had gotten swept up in the excitement and was now happily bouncing in time with the girl’s wonderful breasts. A textbook on the nightstand vibrated over the edge and clattered to the floor, although by now neither Paul nor the brunette saw or heard anything but each other, thrusting and squeezing and clenching their lower lips between greedy gulps of air, more oxygen fueling the growing furnace inside their bodies.

Their breaths quickly grew ragged and short. Paul was sweating. The girl was sweating. He couldn’t recall his dorm room ever being this warm. She hadn’t opened her eyes in what seemed like forever.

“O-obey,” she moaned, a word that barely made it past her lips before that clamped shut. “Mmmm.”

Paul felt it. For some reason, he felt the need to let her know he felt it. “I-I think I’m—“ and then it was obvious to both of them, He was holding her wrists when he came, his stubby nails digging in enough to leave tiny red slashes behind.

Somewhere in Middle America, Saturday morning

“So you’re Nicole.”

“Uh huh.”

“And you’re here because?”

“‘Cause I’m your girlfriend and we’re in love, obviously.”

She was sitting upright in his bed, naked except for a bracelet on her wrist, smiling at him with the prettiest smile and staring at him with the prettiest brown eyes. They were gorgeous when they weren’t staring through him.

“But I have no idea who you are. I don’t even know what your name is.”

“We didn’t really have time for names last night. But we do now, right? I mean to be honest with you… um… Pete?”

“Paul.”

“Paaaul.” Another dazzling smile. “I’m Nicole. Hi.” She thrust her hand forward, and he instinctively took it into his own. Instead of a handshake, she used the gesture to pull him closer. His arm gave way and he ended up rolling on top of her, much to her delight, and she placed her free arm across his back to keep him pinned down.

Much to Paul’s delight.

“It’s just so sudden.”

“I know, right? I wasn’t even planning on seeing anyone right now. My ex just left me like, two days ago. And then I found you!”

“But you showed up…” he paused. Her version of the previous night’s events sounded suspiciously different from his. Curious, he switched questions. “Um, what do you remember about last night?”

“Well… we met last night, and you were amazing, and we went to bed, and you were very amazing. And now we’re here.”

This is weird. “But where did we meet? How do we know each other? I’m really confused. Were we at a party together or something?”

She looked at him, a withering glance that would have sent him scurrying away in shame had he not been standing in his own bedroom, and were it not for the sly smile that played the edges of her lips. “So. You have a hot girl in your bed. Naked in your bed, I should add. Right now you’re cuddling with said girl, and she’s loving every second of it.” She slid one hand beneath the sheets and into his boxers. “Oh, hello there. Long time no see.” Paul groaned as she gently slid her hand back and forth.

“And,” she continued, “I’m about to say something I’ve never said to a guy after a first date, ever, and that’s that I think I’m madly in love with you. Like, seriously, madly, let’s run down to the church and get married kind of in love with you. And even though I keep trying to convince myself that I’m just rebounding over Charlie, you know what? That’s not it. I really think I’m falling in love with you, Pete.”

“Paul.”

She wrinkled her nose. “This is why you were alone in your dorm on a Friday night, Paaaaulll.”

“Sorry! I just, I’m not…”

“Not finished fucking me yet?” She stared at him with lust in her eyes, and ran her tongue along her lips. “Are you honestly interested in the finer details of how we got to here? Or can we figure out our life story together after you get inside me?”

She reached for him, and this time Paul reached back.

Fifty million miles from Earth, Saturday afternoon

“I still can’t believe you lost the control unit, idiot.”

“Look, I was angry! You know how frustrated I was! The humanoid female brought us garbage. And she ruined our timetable!”

Q’nan finished reprogramming the nav computer, setting a new course that would keep Mars between their ship and Earth until it was time to land again. “We can’t control the humanoid female’s mind without the control unit. So unless it’s on the ship somewhere, we’re going to have to start all over again.”

“I looked everywhere, Q’nan.”

The taller alien surveyed the messy surroundings. “I have my doubts. My point still stands. Without our slave, we’ll have to go back to capturing the humanoid females ourselves, which makes the whole thing much more risky.”

“She’s still our slave, though. Her programming is already implanted. She will continue to bring a new humanoid female to the landing spot every three solar cycles until we command her to stop. Besides, I wasn’t sure if this old slaver stuff was even going to work, so I brought along a backup control unit and bracelet.”

B’nak pointed to the science station, where a second iridescent control unit was just visible underneath a mess of unrelated wiring. “All we have to do is program the next humanoid female the first one brings us into a second drone and have them both collect slaves for us. Double the product in half the time, and when they’re finished we can brain smooth the two of them and head home.”

“And then we’ll be rich, right? At least until the cartel kills us and takes our slaves for themselves.”

“Hey, hey, when have I ever steered you wrong, Q’nan?”

Q’nan began to speak, then thought the better of it.