Alison couldn't understand why Jon asked each victim what she wanted to do first--mind controllers usually did what they wanted--so he tried to explain. "I found out what I could do by accident when I was tutoring one of our school's star volleyball players--my old school, before we moved here. We were at her house, sitting at the kitchen table, no one else home. Sometime during the session, Jenny seemed to go all hazy. So I told her, 'Hey, wake up! Gotta study so you can pass this test!' And she answered like she was half-asleep. 'Waking up...study so I can pass this test.' And like that, she was walking herself through the chapter, and talking herself through the examples, and she was making perfect sense, except she still sounded half asleep!"

"That wasn't how she normally studied, was it?"

"God, no! She did well in school, but she had to work her ass off for her grades. She'd get just to the edge of getting it, but it was usually a struggle for her to make that final connection--to put it all together. Instead, there she was, practically speed-reading and comprehending it all! And sounding half-asleep while she did it! So I told her she was doing great, and she gave me the same dozing-off voice again: 'Doing great...studied...I will pass this test.'"

"Weird...."

"Yeah...so I said a couple more things, like 'You'll ace the test' and 'You'll pay more attention in class'--she'd always admitted she couldn't focus during those lectures, and I don't blame her because that teacher could call a horse race and put you to sleep--and she repeated everything back to me with more and more enthusiasm while still sounding half asleep."

"Was that when you realized what you'd done?"

"Not yet. I don't know why I said this, I wouldn't have dreamed of saying this normally, but I said something like, 'And you're so pumped that you take your shirt off!' I know I was saying it as a joke, but even so, I don't know why I said it."

"And she did it, and you did exactly what any teenage boy would do under the circumstances."

"And she did it, and.... Would other teenage boys just sit there in shock?"

Alison pondered the question. "Yeah...probably...at least for a few seconds."

Jon turned red. "Longer than a few seconds, at least it seemed that way. I was torn between telling her I was kidding, or leaving her like that, or seeing if I could get her to take anything else off, or getting her shirt back on before she woke up and kicked my ass into next week--I didn't even dream of trying to get lucky. Somewhere along the way, I told myself, 'Now what do I do?' I hadn't realized I'd said it out loud, and it wasn't directed at her at all. She thought it was, though, because she told me to dance with her! I thought she was kidding...well, I'm not even sure I was thinking anymore, I was so confused...but then she turns on the radio, finds a fast song, and pulls me out of my chair!"

"She wanted to dance?"

Jon shrugged. "That wasn't what I expected either, but that's what we did. Well, she danced; I was closer to 'spastic jerking' or something." Alison grinned, and so did Jon as he continued. "I was just about to ask her what was going on--and hoping that it wouldn't shake her out of whatever she was in, especially not with her shirt off in front of me, with no idea why--when that song ended, and a slow song came on. Jenny said, 'Thanks--Bobby won't dance unless he can grind into me.' Bobby was her jock boyfriend. 'Now dance to this.'"

"So...I started out like this," and Jon put his hands on each side of an imaginary dance partner's waist as if he was dancing as far away from 'her' as possible. Jon was still on his back in bed, so it took a second or two for Alison to mentally translate Jon's action from "lying down with arms in air" to "dancing standing up". "She actually had to reel me in closer!" Jon pretended to be reeled in; one of his hands moved to the neck and shoulders of his pretend dancer, who was now close enough that Jon could wrap his other arm around 'her' back at the waist. He and Alison both laughed, then he stopped with his arms still embracing the air.

"I'd never held a girl before--probably no big surprise there--so I was already plenty excited just having my hands here"--he moved his hands back above invisible hips at arm's length--"because...well, because it's a girl! And it's her body! And I could feel her move! But when she pulled me in"--Jon wrapped his arms around 'Jenny' again--"We were just touching in front, so I could feel her breasts, and of course that was incredible, but I could also feel...you know, this was even better than being at a real dance because...well, girls usually don't take their shirts off before dancing...and I could feel bare skin, I could feel her neck and shoulders, and I could feel them move as we swayed back and forth, and I could feel her lower back as she moved, and I could just feel the very start of the top of her butt, and it wasn't just the breasts, but the movement of her entire body that turned me on..." He let go of his pretend dance partner, and dropped his arms back onto the bed. "I don't know if that makes sense or not..."

Alison shivered just a bit; despite their closeness, Jon didn't feel it since it happened just as his arms hit the bed. "No, you make perfect sense! Go on...."

"So while we were dancing, I kept moving my hands around, and enjoying how her body felt. I still didn't know what I was doing--except that I didn't feel quite so uncoordinated with this song--so I asked her what I should do next. 'You're doing just fine...nice and slow,' she said. Smooth and clueful as I was, I asked her, 'I'm not dancing too slow, am I? Should I speed up?'" Jon sighed in general disgust at himself. "She told me she was talking about my arms and not my legs, and I started babbling about how her body felt, and I'd never held a girl before, and I just rambled on like...well, like I am now."

"You're not rambling. I'm following you just fine." Jon noticed that Alison was still smiling, which was somewhat reassuring.

"After we finished dancing, she gave me a long, long kiss, and she had her hands behind my head, and her hands felt so good back there that I put my hands behind her head. I told her how it felt to run my hands through her hair, and how her hands felt in my hair, and the feel of her breasts against my chest, and of her lips against mine...then she told me how my body felt against her, and my hands, and my hair, and, umm, how hard I was, and 'God, I wish Bobby noticed a tenth of what you notice', and...and...." Jon stopped to catch his breath.

"And?"

"And then...she asked me what I wanted to do next. And the way she asked it, even I could figure out she was talking about sex, except...except I didn't know what to do next. I mean, I knew the eventual outcome, I'd surfed the web often enough, but I wasn't sure what I ought to do first. So in desperation, I asked Jenny for suggestions. Not the most manly thing to do at a time like that, but I couldn't think of anything better."

"Makes sense."

"Jenny complained that Bobby wasn't much on foreplay. He was constantly pawing at her, and with him, it wasn't even 'wham, bam, thank you, ma'am', it was more like 'wham, bam, talk about football again'. So she told me to take it slow, she showed me how she wanted to be kissed, the right way to play with her breasts--'they're not bicycle horns, no matter what my boyfriend thinks,' she said--somewhere along the way we went from the kitchen to her bedroom, and she even suggested that I, ummm...er, go down on her."

Alison broke up Jon's long pause. "Did you?"

"At first, I really didn't want to, but she'd complained about her boyfriend wanting her to go down on him but refusing to reciprocate. That didn't seem fair to me either, so I, uh, went ahead." Jon covered his face. "She even had to show me to aim for the clit."

"Let me guess. You were thinking, 'If the cock goes in there, that must be where the tongue goes, too!'" ("Don't remind me," Jon mumbled behind his hands.) "Hey, you're not the first guy to think that! So did you find the spot she wanted?"

Jon dropped his hands and looked up. "Oh my God! Well, more like 'OooooohhhhhmyyyyyGoooooooood!'" They both laughed, especially since Jon tried to mimic Jenny's facial expressions. "After I got that reaction from her, oral sex didn't seem like a bad thing at all. The rest of the 'tutoring session' went like that. She'd ask me to do something, or she'd show me how to do it--or both--then she'd ask me how it felt. I'd tell her, and each time she seemed to melt a little bit more. And one thing led to another...." Jon tried to adjust his erection without touching it by pretending to get more comfortable on the bed, while Alison pretended not to notice.

"Were you, er, protected?"

"I didn't have anything--until that moment, I was more likely to need an elephant gun than condoms--but she did. Apparently, Bobby always 'forgot' to pick them up, so she always had some on hand. He wore them, she said, but he obviously wasn't happy about wearing them."

"Were you happy about wearing them?"

"Under the circumstances, I'd have been happy wearing duct tape and a chicken suit! Of course, she also put the condom on me--another one of those things where I needed help--and that sort of attention didn't hurt matters at all..."

"And one thing led to another?"

"Um, yeah." Jon was blushing again. "And then after...that...I asked her what was going on. Probably should have asked her while we were still, y'know, mostly dressed, but I wasn't thinking."

"Not with the head upstairs, anyway." Jon could have easily parsed Alison's observation as a slam, except for the way she said it.

She sounded almost...affectionate? Nah...'knowing', maybe, but surely she's not being affectionate to me! Out loud, Jon continued. "Jenny told me she was in a trance, because she was tired and the studying had lulled her into this state, 'and no, it's not you, that's just what math does to me,' she said. It was the weirdest thing I'd ever heard, up 'til then. She was talking very matter-of-fact...like she was observing someone else, and describing what she'd seen. None of that 'IIII obeyyyyy' zombie talk. Although I've never heard 'thaaaat taaaalk' from anyone else, outside of the transition phase into trance--but I'm getting ahead of myself."

Alison nodded. "I've seen a lot of Ints do that--well, intend to do that--but I think that's just because they get off on the zombie-slave 'Yeeess Maaaster, let me suck your mighty Spirit Stick' crap--and yes, we encountered one Int last year who really intended to make someone say that!" She rolled her eyes as Jon shook his head in disbelief. "But I wonder why Jenny took off her shirt. That wasn't something she'd normally do, and you hadn't tried to shift her perceptions to circumstances where removing her shirt was normal. Uh, she didn't normally take her shirt off during tutoring sessions, right?"

Jon laughed. "No! Otherwise I'd be too mush-brained to tutor! But that was the first thing I thought when she mentioned trances--the 'you can't be forced to do anything you don't want while hypnotized' notion--so I asked her about that. She thought about it for a while, then she finally concluded there was something soothing about the way I talked--I thought it was a euphemism for 'boring'--and she'd been up the past several nights catching up on homework after games and practices, and she hadn't had enough sleep, and she was tired all the time. She kept talking about the way I talked. That it seemed so easy to just give in, and let someone else drive so she could just relax. To trust me."

"To trust you so much, she took off her shirt in front of you?"

"I was puzzled, and so was she when I asked her. She finally decided it was a bunch of things. Part of her had sunk deeply into the 'just give in' trance, so that part didn't have a problem with the shirt. Part of her wanted to kick my ass for suggesting it. Part of her concluded it might be kinda fun to blow the virgin's mind with a bra-and-cleavage show 'cause she could tell I was interested in her. And if I tried to take it too far, no problem, she'd just have the double-pleasure of blowing my mind and kicking my ass. And part of her was sick of Bobby's behavior, and decided she'd rather give the bra-and-cleavage show to a geek virgin than a Neanderthal jerk. Lucky for me, the 'kick ass now' side lost the argument, so off went the shirt. She figured that the 'blow his mind' and 'sick of Bobby' factions were jointly responsible for suggesting the fast dance. And during the slow song, 'sick of Bobby' took the driver's seat for good."

"Sounds like the right suggestion to the right person at the right time! Does she remember...anything that happened?"

Jon shook his head. "I was afraid 'kick ass now' would win as soon as she came out of...whatever she was in. I'd read a bunch of stuff on the Internet about hypnosis, serious and otherwise, so I asked her if post-hypnotic suggestions were possible. She said that they would work on her, but she begged me not to make her forget what we'd just done--which makes me wonder how much Internet reading she'd done on hypnosis, but I didn't think to ask her at the time. Anyway, that made absolutely no sense to me--why would she want to remember sex with me?--but she explained that she'd never, ever been treated that well in bed. Come to think of it, she'd never actually been in her bedroom with her boyfriend. Which didn't bother her--she was afraid he'd find her room too girly--but once Bobby got rolling, he didn't want to stop for anything, including a more comfortable position for her."

Alison snorted. "Bobby sounds like a real winner."

"Yeah. I asked Jenny how she'd react if she came out of it, and remembered everything." Jon paused. "She finally said she didn't know. She might kick my ass--which didn't surprise me, since I figured that was the most likely scenario--or she might ask Bobby to do what I did. But she said that wouldn't be pretty since Bobby might ask her where she'd picked up all those 'sicko' ideas. After that, he'd probably break up with her, and definitely kick my ass. She really wanted to dump Bobby and go out with me, but she said she just couldn't do it."

"Why not?"

"She was really embarrassed to tell me, but she finally admitted she'd miss the attention of being Bobby's girlfriend. She figured I'd be a much better boyfriend than Bobby, but dating Bobby just might be her ticket out of town."

"Ouch! That hurts!"

"Well, yeah...but not the way you'd think. I couldn't get upset with her because she was already far more upset with herself. As pathetic as it sounded to my ears, it must have sounded even more pathetic to her ears because she knew--when she was under trance, anyway--that she was making a stupid decision, but couldn't get up the nerve to do better. And this was coming from someone who was a shoo-in for a college volleyball scholarship, so she would do better."

Alison was quiet for a few seconds. "Wow. I'm not sure if you call that 'getting lucky' or 'unlucky'. For you, or for her."

"Yeah. The more we talked, the more we realized she'd be more hurt if she remembered we'd had sex, because then she'd have to consciously make the stupid decision. But neither of us really wanted her to continue making unconscious stupid decisions, either. Finally, I suggested that she not remember the sex specifically--except maybe as a dream, and certainly not with me--but I asked her what she thought about a post-hypnotic suggestion to help her stand up for herself in the bedroom." Jon sighed and added, "She was OK with that, but she said she'd also need help standing up for herself in his back seat, on the hood of his car, on the football field's fifty-yard line, or any place he got the urge."

"Bobby's a real winner, alright. Is that what you did?"

"Yeah. I told her to remember that she should get what she wants in bed too, and she should look for someone willing to enjoy all of her and not just the usual body parts. If her boyfriend wasn't willing to do all that, she should look for someone who was willing." Jon paused. "Maybe I was secretly hoping she'd come looking for me, I don't know. She didn't, of course, but she did dump him later that week. And she found someone more willing to meet her half-way."

"Or some other position," Alison smirked.

"Lots of positions, from some of the vibes I picked up later. And her ex-boyfriend never caught a clue that it wasn't her, it was him. Anyway, I scanned the girls at school the day after Jenny's 'tutoring' session, and found that most of them were just as screwed up as Jenny. It was amazing how many of those girls honestly thought there was nothing more to life than finding Mr. Right, getting married, promising to obey, and all that. Because they really, truly couldn't see any other way of life."

Jon didn't seem willing to continue his story, but Alison suspected she already knew the next chapter. "So you did something similar with other girls?"

"Yeah. Actually, uh, a lot of other girls at my old school. I'd find some way to put someone under, I'd 'convince' her that I was a suitable partner sex-wise--not 'Mr. Perfect', just 'Mr. Good Enough That You Can Touch Him Without Barfing' was all. I'd ask her what she wanted to do, and we'd do it at the speed she wanted, usually slow. Thanks to Jenny, I'd learned 'slow' was good because I had time to concentrate on all of her. Afterwards, I'd make her forget the actual event while suggesting that she look for guys willing to please her." Jon shrugged. "Guess that's the only way I could feel superior to the School Studs--by showing their girlfriends they could do better. And then silently gloat as they'd break up with their School Stud boyfriends, which I know isn't nice, but...." Another shrug. "And when you've assumed you could never turn anyone on, not even with mind control, it's a real turn-on when you do."

Alison murmured in agreement, and then stopped. After glanced toward Jon, she looked away as she tried to figure out the most polite way to phrase her next question. "So, have you seen any...changes in your social life since then?"

"Social life? What do you mean?"

"Dating."

"'Dating' as in 'dating without mind control'?" Jon shook his head.

"Girls won't go out with you?"

"I don't ask. If I already know the answer, why ask the question?"

Alison sat quietly for a few seconds, deep in thought, but then she brightened. "I think I know what I ought to do with you now." Jon turned pale as he visualized unseen Guardians homing in on his brain with "group override" commands. "No, you're fine!" she reassured him. "We have a bunch of options available, and we're encouraged to be creative, but I'm going to be a bit more creative than usual."

Jon couldn't even say anything; instead, he nodded slightly and braced himself for his punishment.

"Relax, I don't think you'll find this too severe," Alison reassured him as she lay back down on the bed, facing him. "First, imagine something for me. Say you've done an induction on someone. You've asked her what she wanted to do first, and she had no clue. Maybe she was so used to doing things the guy's way that she never realized there were other ways. What would you do?"

Jon didn't answer immediately; he was still tensing up for punishment. "You're talking with mind control, right?" He thought for a moment. "Kiss her first, nice and slowly." He held his arms above him, pretending to hold someone atop him--apparently acting it out so he wouldn't miss any steps. "Hold her in my arms--oh, standing up, not lying down--and just hold her and feel how her back...um, feel how her back feels, and her neck and her shoulders. That feels wonderful, and somehow, I don't know how, she always picks up on that feeling, and it makes her feel wonderful too."

Alison playfully asked, "Maybe she picks up on the feeling of you getting hard?"

Jon blushed, and dropped his arms. "Probably not just that. I'm a guy--just about anything gets guys hard!" He didn't really mean to say that, and he blushed even more. "But it seems like, I don't know, she picks up some other signal that I'm enjoying more than...what the guy usually enjoys. Or even notices."

"Can you show me?" Without warning, Alison wrapped one arm around Jon's stomach and slid her other arm under his back. She waited for a few seconds for him to make the first move.

His first move was to drop his jaw. "Whuh?"

With Jon in shock, she realized she'd have to get the demonstration rolling on her own. Using her arms and her weight, she turned Jon around to face her, slid one hand up to the back of his head, leaned into him, and kissed him.

"Wha-wha-what...I'm not making you do this! It's not me! Honest!" Jon almost did a mental scan, just to figure out why a college cheerleader would come onto him--or pretend to, more likely--but he was deathly scared of triggering all-out mental retaliation from her unseen coworkers. Assuming they weren't about to retaliate anyway.

"I know you're not making me do anything. I even checked with the others, and they don't see anything messing with my head, other than hormones." (Others? Hormones? My hormones, maybe, but her hormones? thought Jon, who assumed he couldn't possibly get her hormones rolling.) "Trust me. I wouldn't do this if you were in trouble," and with that, the cheerleader rolled on top of him and kissed him again.