The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

1.

Don’t bother reading this.

After a couple of pages, you won’t want to be here, so forget it. Go away. Read something else. Save yourself.

Surely there’s something better on TV. Or, since you have so much free time on your hands, you could take some night classes, become a doctor, save the world from some incurable disease. Not that ambitious? Then maybe you could just color your hair. You’re not getting any younger, you know.

What happens here at first isn’t that interesting. After that, it just gets worse. Consider this your last warning. Get out now, while your head is still in one piece.

This isn’t about someone courageous or virtuous or kind or that you’d want to be like. It’s about me, and I’m not any of those things. What you’re going to get here, if you stick around, is a stupid story about a stupid college jock. A stupid story about somebody you’d probably like to look at but would never want to meet. I’ve got a good body and I’m nice-looking, but I’m not someone you’re going to fall in love with. To tell the truth, it’s none of your business.

This is about a stupid little boy who grew up believing every stupid thing Mommy and Daddy told him about what life was supposed to be like—what he was supposed to be like. Even after the Easter Bunny turned out to be a lie—Santa Claus, too, and the Tooth Fairy, Saint Christopher, Newtonian physics, and a whole bunch of other crap—this stupid kid still believed what everyone told him his life was supposed to be like.

That stupid kid was me. Big surprise, huh? I grew up all screwed up, and I didn’t even know it. It wasn’t until I was in college and working with Coach and Doc that I started getting my head screwed on straight.

Well, maybe “straight” isn’t the right word. If it were, you wouldn’t still be reading this, would you? I know what you want.

You don’t need to know every last detail—it’s not worth telling. It’s stupid to remember all that stuff from when I was a kid. Before college. Before Coach. Before Doc. Early on, Coach told us, “Someday, this will be worth all our efforts. I promise.” Together, we made it happen, “we” being Coach, Doc, and the whole damn team. We made that impossible promise come true, and all it took was the complete reconstruction of all the shit our parents had pumped into our heads, growing up. If you want to reinvent the world in your own image, you have to start by reinventing yourself. Hard work—and interpret that however you want—but worth it.

So again, your final warning: if you’re going to read this, don’t.

If you’re a college student—especially if you’re a jock, or a frat boy, or a campus leader—Doc is coming for you. Sooner or later. He’s ambitious. He’s got plans for you.

So if you think this is going to save you ...

If you think anything is going to save you ...

If you think it could never happen to you ...

Well, now you’ve been warned.

2.

Let’s start with a plot spoiler. The meaning of life. A unified field theory. The big reason why. I’m just fucking with you—I can’t give you any of that.

The school year began like any other. Unfortunately. Ours was a private university. Parents send their kids here out of tradition, or out of the misguided notion that if you were paying Big Bucks for school you were somehow better off than if you went to a state college. Wrong. This place was even worse. The way everyone wore the latest fashions like some sort of uniform. The bureaucracy. The conformity. And, let me tell you, most of these guys conformed.

Well, except for me. If you were a jock, conforming meant playing football or baseball. Those were the “it” sports at this college. I didn’t play either one.

My name is Kip. If there were a twelve-step program for college jocks addicted to their sports, I would stand up now and announce, “Hi. My name is Kip. I’m twenty-one, and I’ve been addicted to playing soccer for as long as I can remember.” Then you’d say hello, and we’d swap stories.

The problem with any story is: it’s told after the fact.

Soccer definitely was not one of the “in” sports. Sure, I was in a smallish fraternity. Sure, I played sports, which set me a couple of steps above the rank-and-file student masses. But on the pecking order of college athletics, the soccer team was definitely lower-tier.

For some reason, the football team singled us out. They watched us like hawks. They made sure we all knew we were second-class citizens playing a second-class sport. It didn’t help that the soccer team hadn’t had a winning season in ... well, in practically the whole history of the school. We were easy targets.

The only thing that kept us from becoming total outcasts was this: We had Jake on our team. Jake was handsome. Jake was popular. Having mega-rich parents didn’t hurt either. Jake was a party animal, a total pussy hound, always working some scam to get into a chick’s pants, and he was notoriously successful. He was a natural athlete—he could have played any sport, but he loved playing soccer almost as much as he loved getting his dick tongue-waxed by some new chick’s mouth. Everybody liked Jake. He could have joined any frat on campus, but he joined the same one I did—his father had belonged, and his grandpa too, so Jake was a legacy. He could have afforded to live off-campus, but he wanted to bunk at the frat house. We both played soccer, so that’s how we got to be roommates in the frat house.

I was so fucking jealous of how easy it was for him—chicks, school, the works. While I was really good-looking too, I wasn’t Jake, so I had my work cut out for me. My family wasn’t rich—I was there on scholarship. Compared to Jake, I was just an average cute boy. And the law of averages states that for every Kip Van Dyne—a.k.a. me—there has to be an equal and opposite number. Mine was Don Halsey, the football team’s wonder boy.

Close your eyes for a moment. Picture yourself on the grassy college quad. Over there are three guys tossing a football in the late afternoon sun. They’re wearing matching team track pants and cleats—no shirts. The one on the far left, the one with blond hair, that’s Halsey. I mean, look at this guy—he’s prettier than most of the girls I’ve dated, and you just know he’s such an arrogant prick. That expression that’s half smile, half sneer? That’s his standard expression. Yeah, that’s just Halsey. There he is now, showing off his pecs as he lobs a pass to his two henchmen, Max and Chris. Chris? Think tan. Think cute. Think preppy jock. He’s good-looking, dark-haired, and a pretty good athlete, but dumb as a loaf of bread, and he totally worships Halsey. As for Max? Think Chris; add blond.

Now, let me set this up for you. Imagine two or three blonde chicks over there. They’re watching Halsey and his two shirtless buds toss that football as if they’re starving lionesses at an all-you-can-eat beefcake buffet. See the girl on the left? Her name is Jane. Meanwhile—ta da!—over there on the other side of the field, standing just outside the sidelines, that handsome young man is me. Kip Van Dyne. I’m giving Jane the hundred-yard stare. I mean, she is so totally hot. And so totally out of my league. And so totally dating Halsey. I’ve had the hots for her for a while now, but she won’t give me the time of day. See, she hates me because I room with Jake.

Jake and Jane boffed one night, a long time ago, after some party at the frat house fall term a year ago—ancient history, right? For Jane, it was Something Special. Jake must’ve made her cum, like, a dozen times. We heard her moaning and yelling all the way down the hall, even over the music and party ruckus. But for Jake, it was just a one-time thing. No big deal. Those one-time things happen a lot for Jake—that’s just how he is. They had this big scene the next day when she came by the frat house to see him, thinking after the night before she was In Love or something, and he pretty much brushed her off with a “thanks but no thanks.” Heck, I don’t think he even remembered her name. But hey, if she didn’t know Jake hardly ever dates any girl more than once, that’s not Jake’s fault—he’s legendary by now. So now she says he used her and she hates him. And she hates me by association because I room with him. And Halsey hates me because she hates me and because he’s seen the way I look at her—as if he needs another reason.

Do I even need to tell you what happens next?

As you’re picturing this scene, you can see Halsey and his two cronies huddling. Me, I’m still focused only on Jane. I’m so in lust I can’t see anything else, and I’ve got a mammoth boner in my pants. Back then, every time I’d look at Jane, I’d get this hard-on that just wouldn’t quit—and with that much blood rushing away from my brain, you can’t expect me to be thinking straight.

Someone shouts, “Yo, Kip! Heads up!” I turn my head, and—

Bam!—goes the football ricocheting off my forehead.

Wham!—goes my ass bouncing against the ground.

Imagine that it takes a couple of moments for me to realize I’ve been knocked backward by this football-missile thrown right into my head. Fuck, that hurt!

Guess who in this scene is the football team quarterback. Guess who could throw a football with that kind of accuracy. And you have to guess without imagining Halsey over there with his arms raised in victory and this big shit-eating grin plastered across his face as everybody laughs at me and his buddies slap his back like he did something good.

Other than knock me on my ass, the only real damage done was this king-sized bruise on my pride. I sit up, and Jane along with everyone else is still laughing at me, and Halsey and Chris are laughing and pointing at me. Max trots over and retrieves the football with a chuckle; without looking at me, and he sneers, “Good catch, Van Dyne. Way to use your head.”

Okay, unless you’re just fascinated by the thought of me sulking off to lick my wounds, you can stop imagining now and open your eyes and we’ll get on with the story. But you see what I mean? Of course I had no idea that Halsey, Jane, and the whole rich-dog-eat-poor-dog system at the college were going to be the least of my worries. My life was about to be changed forever.

3.

Meet Jake. He’s the real hero of this story, at least at first. Six feet tall, trim and muscular from playing sports pretty much since the moment he burst out of his mother’s womb. Sandy hair and blue eyes. The kind of handsome that opens every door with just a grin, and Jake is always grinning. His parents are rich and Jake is used to getting what he wants, but he’s not stuck-up or anything. He has the kind of personality everyone loves immediately. Think “good-looking, carefree college jock,” then amp it up a few levels. That’s Jake.

This isn’t the kind of story that goes, “And then, and then, and then.” Things have a more chaotic feel. Stories will begin in one place, with us thinking one thing is going on, and maybe end up somewhere else. Jump to this point in time, page whatever, and then jump back. You really, really need to get used to that feeling, sitting there in your chair, at work, in your relationship. This is just the world we live in. Just go with the prompts.

Jump to the part where I broke my leg.

Yeah, that’s right. As if all of this weren’t trouble enough—on top of everything else, I broke my leg early in the season. That took me out of soccer practice for a while. Coach could have cut me from the team, which would have been the end of my scholarship, but he didn’t. Whew! Instead, he just benched me and I sat out the first few weeks. That meant, if I recovered fast enough, I could maybe play the last half of the season, maybe even the playoffs.

The break in my leg was clean, so there weren’t supposed to be any complications. Other than the cast, that is, and the cast went from above my thigh down to my ankle. Since I couldn’t get around too well at first and my doctor told me to stay off my leg, I couldn’t go to practice either for about three weeks. That pretty much took me off the radar for a while, as far as Halsey and his gang were concerned. At first I was thinking, Cool—a mini-vacation! But pretty soon I was missing soccer practice and my teammates.

My teammate Jake was also my roommate in the frat house, and he kept me informed of all the team gossip at first. But there’s a difference between seeing the gossip happen firsthand and hearing about it later, and between practice, his social life, school, and study time at the library, Jake wasn’t around much so the news usually wasn’t so new by the time he got around to telling me. He told me the coach of another college had contacted our coach and offered his help as a team efficiency expert, and he told me the expert was introducing all these new training exercises.

All that extra training ate up nearly all Jake’s non-school time, and I didn’t see him around much. He’d pretty much come back to the house at night and collapse face-first into bed—sometimes he didn’t even bother to get undressed first. Then, he’d be gone by the time I got up in the morning. Dang!—Coach must have been working them like hell! Okay, I guess I was kind of jealous.

Jake was really popular at the frat and a walking wet dream for the sorority babes. The sort of guy who always gets what he wants. Everybody liked him, and he was that type of handsome guy who was always smooth at picking up the ladies. He was born to get laid. He always said his secret was to make the chicks feel as good as they could and to make sure they weren’t afraid to ask for what they wanted. He said you’d be shocked sometimes by what people would ask for.

But now that he was putting in all the extra hours training with the team, he missed two weekend socials in a row. I was pretty sure he hadn’t been on a date or gotten laid since all that extra training began, and that was like an eternity for him!

One night, getting close to morning, I woke up when I heard Jake grunt like he’d been kicked in the stomach. I lifted my head off the pillow and peered through the darkness at Jake’s half of the room. Jake sprawled on his back, on top of the sheets, mouth hanging open slightly, one arm bent against his forehead. He sat up, and I heard the familiar twin slaps of his bare feet hitting the floor. I went rigid, guessing he had no idea I was watching him as he plodded stark naked to his desk and yanked several tissues out of the box.

“See what happens when I fight it and have to go without?” Jake muttered in the darkness, as if to himself.

He wasn’t talking to me, but if I’d turned away, he’d know I’d been staring at him. All I could think about was how long it had been for me too since I’d had sex. For Jake it had been just a couple of weeks, at the most; but for me more like a month at least. Since before I broke my leg and got this dang cast.

Pale light from the window fell across his chest. He swabbed the tissues across his stomach, his laugh low and gnarled with sleep. He threw both arms out, displaying his perfect body to no one in particular, and glanced down at the tube of his erection, deflating but still definitely a big one. He looked back at me. I closed my eyes quickly, before he caught me looking, but not before I’d seen the remaining semen smeared in an arc above his navel. Despite the sleepy playfulness in his voice, the boyishness with which he was showing off his nocturnal emission to the darkness, he was not playing the little boy taking pride in what he’d done. Right then, he was the kid on the playground shoving a dead insect in another kid’s face. What I didn’t know yet was that I was hearing the last of Jake’s resistance melting away. What I didn’t know yet was what would happen next. And then, and then ...

I rolled over as best I could with my broken leg and the cast, without opening my eyes, and tried to wipe my mind clean. As the memory and wakefulness faded back into sleep, a single thought swung back and forth in my mind like a pendulum, getting louder each time it scraped bottom in its downward swoop: When did Jake start sleeping naked?

4.

The trick to forgetting the big picture is to look at everything close-up.

Jump to the part in the library.

Doc was very good at keeping us from taking that step back and seeing at the big picture. We were so immersed in the close-ups that we weren’t always aware of the changes in and around us.

See, we were willing, but even if we weren’t there was no stopping it. Once Doc had Jake, no one else stood a chance. Jake was pure seduction on two legs. He could talk anybody into anything, and he had this way of always getting what he wanted—who he wanted—and he just reeled them in for Doc.

Every life moves toward, then radiates from, a single moment in time. I was in the library doing research for a paper. This was maybe a week after I had gotten my cast off—by then I had met Doc myself and I was back in practice with the team. Studying came easily now—just a matter of focus. I was in the library, and I heard Jake’s low, throaty laugh, coming from some place. I pulled myself away and tried to pinpoint the location.

The sound of Jake’s voice, low, and another guy’s, barely intelligible. While the center of the floor was taken up entirely by shelves, the outer walls were lined with private study carrels reserved for juniors and seniors. Peering between the shelves of books, I glimpsed Jake sitting across from a young guy I thought maybe I recognized. The guy had a slimmer, younger version of Jake’s build, with dimpled cheeks and pouty lips.

What was his name? Trevor? Tyler? Taylor?—that was it. The freshman football player. I’d met him during rush week, right before I broke my leg The boy with the Texas accent and the Bible-thumper parents. His father worked for the school, Dean of Something-or-other. I heard Taylor had pledged another frat instead, the one half the football players belonged to, but that was all I knew about him.

Right then, his eyes were fixed on Jake’s with awe and desire. Jake was reeling in another one.

Taylor’s voice had a low, gentle drawl to it, and he spoke shyly, almost as if he were asking questions. “So I’m practically racing all the way home, okay? And soon as I get there, I hide my backpack under the bed, right? I mean, I never got to take it out.”

“Hustler? You bought Hustler and they didn’t ask how old you were?” Jake asked.

Taylor grinned proudly and nodded. “Yep. So anyway, that night Daddy calls us—“

“Daddy?” Jake’s imitation was just gentle enough not to be mocking.

Taylor bowed his head slightly and shook it, embarrassed. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

Their eyes met for a second before Taylor snapped back to his story. “So he calls us down for dinner, and Mom’s in the kitchen, right? And I sit down at my place, and she comes waltzing out with two plates. One for my brother and one for me. Sets his down in front of him, and sets mine down in front of me. Guess what was on it?”

“Hustler.”

After a moment, they realized how loudly they were laughing, and Taylor looked around nervously. I caught my breath as he looked my way, but he didn’t see me. I was witnessing one of Jake’s seductions in progress, this one with a new twist. Jake had always been a real predator when it came to fucking chicks, but when did he start going after guys too?

“What did you say?” Jake asked, bending toward Taylor, his elbows braced on the table.

“Oh, I denied it to Kingdom Come. Didn’t make no difference, though. Daddy could just tell by the way I came home that I was up to something no good. And there weren’t much I could do. It was in my backpack. But hell, if it was such a big crime, why did he have his own little stash of dirty magazines hidden in the shed out back? He didn’t know I knew about that, though.”

“Shame you never got to look at it,” Jake said, eyes bright as if suggesting the untold pleasures of pornography.

Taylor just shook his head and pulled an open book across the table until it rested protectively against his chest. “Well, I’ve—uh, I’ve done plenty of looking since.”

“At Hustler?” Jake asked with a crooked smile.

Taylor lifted his head halfway, as if deciding whether to meet the challenge.

“They have guys in Hustler?” Jake asked.

In the heavy silence between them, I realized Taylor had never said anything to Jake about liking guys. Jake just knew somehow.

“Who says I ...”

“I do.” Jake cut him off gently, leaning forward in his chair.

“Oh, do you?” Taylor smirked.

Jake smiled and shrugged. I recognized that shrug—it was his silent way of saying, Anything’s possible when you’re me. The shrug made me wonder who was really talking here, Jake or Doc?

“Your father—how did he punish you?” Jake asked. His eyes were intent but slightly glazed. It was a look I recognized from practice.

“You mean for the magazine?” Taylor asked.

“Yeah, for the magazine.”

“He made me burn it.”

“That’s a shame.”

Taylor choked out a short laugh. “Why? You think he and I should have sat down and looked through it together? What would your daddy have done?”

“It sounds like we have very different daddies. Mine,” Jake began, rising out of his chair as Taylor’s eyes widened slightly, fixed on Jake’s groin, “taught me that the majority of the evil crap in this world comes from people who are afraid of what their bodies are capable of.”

Taylor’s mouth opened in shock.

With the lump in his crotch pressed down against the edge of the table top, Jake leaned in and murmured, “It’s kind of amazing what you can do when you stop being afraid of yourself and learn to focus on what you want.” Jake lowered his face to a couple of inches from Taylor’s dumbfounded stare.

And Jake was whispering, Shhh ...

Jake was murmuring, It’s all right.

Jake was saying, Just focus on what you want.

I slid away from the shelf and slipped away without disturbing his victory.

5.

Here’s a hole in language. I’m going to hide myself in it for a moment; then we’ll move on.

Jump back a little and begin again.

Begin on the soccer practice field. Not our soccer field. The other school’s. Early morning.

The other school’s soccer coach and their “efficiency expert”—they had invited our coach to visit and observe their methods in action.

Our coach saw perfection. Perfect form. The soccer team executing drills perfectly, in unison, moving as one body. They looked ecstatic. Blissful. Peaceful. Completely focused on their drills.

He noticed that once in a while the efficiency expert would go off and call one of the players over. They would talk. He noticed the player always started to look ... odd. But the player always returned to the practice drills looking more focused, more dedicated. More committed.

That’s what he wanted for his team. For us.

Focus.

Dedication.

Commitment.

Soon, when practice was over, the team captain took the players off to train them in a different way. The other school’s head coach and the expert took our coach back to the office to talk. Our coach explained his troubles.

The expert started talking about focus. Commitment. Training mind and body. How deeply training could occur with even the smallest amount of focus, and how naturally it would become part of the team’s lives. The other coach seemed to be dozing, eyes closing. Our coach thought that was kind of weird, but he had started feeling drowsy himself.

The expert was encouraging him gently, Relax.

The expert was saying to him, Imagine your stress as a block of ice, melting, flowing away.

The expert was telling him, Relax, sleep.

Coach realized he did feel very sleepy, as his eyes began to close.

6.

Someone once said, “Life is a team sport,” but I don’t agree completely. Teamwork can be beautiful and it wins games, but teams are always owned by their heroes.

Jump to the part where I, on my crutches and cast, made it down to the soccer field for the first time since I broke my leg.

This was right after I saw Jake wiping off his cum that morning in our room I’d been out of commission for about three weeks, and I was missing the game and the guys. Heck, I even missed Coach busting my balls every time he got a burr up his butt about something. Well, okay, maybe I didn’t miss that part so much.

I was still kind of clumsy getting around with my cast, but I managed. There wasn’t much I could do but sit on the sidelines and watch, but hey, that’s why I was there. I was still part of the team, and it was great to see the guys again.

I parked my butt on the sidelines. I still couldn’t stand up for very long on one leg and my crutches—very frustrating. Coach, in his tee-shirt announcing DISCIPLINED in huge block letters across his crest, had the guys running drills. Sprints back and forth across the field, passing drills, standard shit like that. Some people might think being on the soccer team is all about flashy stuff like bicycle kicks and making that great play at the goal, but soccer practice is really mostly about running drills over and over. Not all that exciting to watch, maybe, but I was happy just to be there.

Coach had them running drills, and they were like something else. They’d made a lot of headway in the few weeks I’d been out. Everything was going like clockwork. The guys were moving precisely and perfectly, almost more like machines than men. Less disruptive horseplay. More focused. Intense.

There was some new guy there on the sidelines. When I asked Coach who the guy was, he didn’t really pay that much attention to me because he was intent on watching the guys practice. All he said was that the guy had been hired to help the team become more efficient. An efficiency expert.

Okay, I thought to myself, whatever works. I parked my butt on the ground on the sidelines—and let me say it’s not easy getting down on the ground with most of your leg immobilized in a cast—to watch some more.

“Pretty impressive, don’t you think?”

An unfamiliar voice over my shoulder, and I bent my head around and up to look.

“Hi,” the efficiency expert said and introduced himself. Doctor Something-or-other, he said as we shook hands. “Call me Doc.”

“I’ve been meaning to get in touch with you,” he said. “Even though you can’t practice on the field yet, you should be working through some mental training exercises with the team. We don’t want you to be too far behind when you get out of that cast. As you can see”—he gestured at the guys going through their drills—“the exercises are very effective, but like any game skill, they take dedication and commitment.”

So of course I asked what kind of exercises, and he told me about this series of mental training drills designed to help us learn to focus our whole mind on visualizing our goals and the tools for achieving them, ways of directing our minds to help discipline our bodies. He didn’t have to work very hard to sell me on the idea, since the team looked pretty impressive out there.

He started talking and pointing out things, like how focused this guy looked or how that guy was blocking out something that might have otherwise distracted him. How relaxed they seemed. How committed. How I could start feeling those things happening in myself. I kept watching them running through their drills, perfect as clockwork, and I felt so relaxed and peaceful, this feeling of awe, and wonder, and deep unity with all of them and everything around me, feeling myself open up and relax and focus, just like he was saying, and feeling myself wanting that focus, to make that commitment, like the rest of the team, and feeling so relaxed, and feeling it start happening in me ...

I sat up. Somehow, I’d started feeling really relaxed and focused, kind of sleepy, just like he said. He’d been talking to me, and I’d just laid back and listened. Now he had snapped his fingers, and I blinked in the sunlight and sat up. I blinked and looked at the team on the field, still running through their drills, then I looked at Doc.

He grinned and said, “Yes, I think you’ll catch up in no time.”

7.

Meet Nathan and Shane. They’re the heroes of another story, but they’re taking up residence in this one. Don’t worry if you don’t like them—that’s not why they’re here. Nathan is five-feet-ten, maybe a hundred and sixty pounds, all sleek muscle on a swimmer’s build. His hair stakes out a color somewhere near the intersection of “dark blond” and “light brown.” Brown eyes. Shane is taller, six-one, and slimmer. Blonder too. Deep blue eyes.

Jump to the part where the visitors arrived.

Jake and I—we were cutting through the front room of our frat house on our way to the kitchen when the front door opened.

I propped myself on my crutches and said, “Hi. Can I help you?”

Two guys were coming in, each carrying a suitcase, like they planned to stay a while.

“Hey,” the taller one said. “I’m Shane. This is Nathan. We’re from the chapter at”—he named a college sounded really familiar. “We’re looking for the president and rush chair. Can you tell us where to find them?”

Something about the way they carried themselves seemed really familiar too. That easy confidence, almost predatory.

Shane was tall, slim. My first impression was that he looks like some geek, probably on the math team or something, but underneath he had a good body and he was a good-looking guy. For a geek.

Nathan was built like a swimmer: sleek muscles everywhere. His eyes seemed to be boring right into my head. His lips were curved, a slight, confident smile—probably arrogant, but I decided he was very handsome.

That’s when I placed the name of the college Shane mentioned: it was the school Doc had come from. They were members of our fraternity chapter at that school.

“I think I know who you are,” Nathan said to Jake. “You’re Jake, right? Doc told us all about you.”

Shane said to me, “So you must be Kip? Yeah, Doc told us about you too.”

I thought, He did?

We all shook hands. Something about them made my dick want to come out and shake their hands too, because it was starting to harden.

Shane said, “Yeah, Doc’s pretty impressed with you two. He says you’ve mastered his training exercises already. That’s good, since your chapter president invited us here to show you guys some similar exercises Doc taught us that can help you focus and study better. We’re going to help you guys get your grade point averages up.” He was looking me right in the eye, and he brought up a finger and swaggered it back at forth in the air between our eyes, in pretty much the same rhythm Doc had used with the team in the locker room when he told us to focus on the light. Shane’s voice dropped to a low, smooth purr. “That’s it. Doc says you focus almost by instinct now. So dedicated. Always staying focused. Yes, I can see he was right. You are really good at focusing.”

He snapped his fingers. I hadn’t realized how far I was gone already until he did that—it woke me up. I’d been nearly out of it already, nearly cocooned again in that deep, familiar state of hypnosis, just from listening to him. I glanced over at Jake, and he was blinking away the sleep too.

“But that’ll have to wait,” Shane said, “until after we check in with your president—he’s expecting us.”

“Yeah,” Nathan said with a snicker. “We’re gonna discuss some mergers and acquisitions.”

“Down that hall,” Jake murmured drowsily. “Third door on the left.”

“Thanks,” Nathan said, as they picked up their suitcases again. “We’ll check you soon. Very soon.”