The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Will loved, and hated, his life right now.

Three months before, he had constructed a device, from information he’d gleaned from the dark web, that was supposed to have mind control properties. He called what he had cobbled together the Instant Trance Generator and Traits Adjustment System, or ITG-TAS for short.

Then he’d used it. The girl he’d had a crush on throughout high school, Julie, had recently broken up with her boyfriend, and he decided to see if he could use his device to break down the walls of the Friend Zone that his crush had put him in.

Alas, being a horny 19-year-old taking a year off between high school and college, Will didn’t think in of breaking down internal emotional barriers. He thought in of getting laid—better yet, getting laid with the girl he’d been pining over for four years. And better, even, than that, his thought process went, having Julie become his girlfriend, so they could have sex on a regular basis, into the foreseeable future. And beyond that—almost beyond hope—that maybe they could build a future together.

What he wished he had understood then was that he was in love with the girl, not just in horny teen lust (though that was there, too, of course). It was hard, with his limited experience, for Will to understand it, but he really didn’t want to just fuck Julie. He wanted to be in a relationship with her. He wanted them to be boyfriend and girlfriend not just because it meant regular sex, but more because just being with her made him happy, and if they could share love... it was something that had seemed too bright to look at, in his imagination, too bright to even consider trying for.

He had truly loved Julie since they were both 14, and she had been a good and valued friend. But for some reason, she’d classified him as out of bounds for romance. He didn’t understand how that worked, but being your normal horny teenager, who’d been on a few dates and lost his virginity as a junior to a girl he ended up not getting along with very well, he’d thought he understood all about love and sex. But now that he was where he was at, with Julie, he wasn’t sure he understood any of it.

His plan seemed to have worked perfectly. The device seemed to do exactly what it was supposed to. His girl had melted into his arms, his Friend Zone exile was ended forever, and he was warmly and fervently welcomed—nearly dragged—into his first love’s bed, heart and life. Julie had turned out to be a kind, considerate, emotionally generous and loving girlfriend to him. And an absolute handful in bed, where they had spent a lot of their free time since getting together. He didn’t want to risk anything that could possibly interfere with his—no, their—happiness. They confessed their love for each other many times a day, and demonstrated it with their bodies every time they had a chance at some privacy. Which, because Will’s Dad and stepmom were recently married themselves, and could relate to their desires more than a lot of parents might, had been pretty easy to achieve, at his house. Even on days when Julie didn’t spend the night, they’d usually find some time to make love in his bed at some point during the day.

A variety of factors had led to them becoming quite strongly bonded. They both recognized it, but neither of them had any problems with it. It was exactly where each of them wanted to be, and each was quite happy about it.

What’s more, from an experimental point of view, Will discovered that, as the weeks and months of the summer flew past, there was no sign of any reversion of the personality adjustment his device had wrought on his best girl. Maybe it was true that such adjustments were permanent. Or maybe they had simply moved past that deflection point, so quickly and confidently, that the enormous mass of experience they now had at being lovers, in love with and bonded to each other, was solidly locked into place, regardless of how the triggering event happened, and whether or not the command set that altered her behavior that day was still influencing her. You make love, and really mean it, enough times, Will thought, and maybe you end up in the same place, no matter how you started down that path.

But, Will’s inner demons would not leave him alone. He had a growing, shame-soaked feeling that it was all a lie. That he had, somehow, cheated. He was convinced that Julie hadn’t loved him until he made his mind control device and used it to make her into his girlfriend—well, at this point, into his fiancée/wife/mate, whatever word you wanted to use. They had flashed right past boyfriend/girlfriend and moved to engaged after their first day making love, after all, and had only become closer in the months since. By changing the context of her life from one in which he was stuck in the Friend Zone to one in which she’d decided to be his girlfriend, he had not only changed her feelings towards him, he had somehow multiplied them a hundredfold, and made her believe that she had fallen in love (and lust) with him, weeks before he’d altered her. As a result, she was now giving him her 19-year-old all, in bed and in life.

She was just starting to attend the local college, where the fall session was starting, and while she was getting her share of attention from the boys on campus, she absolutely only had eyes for Will. The engagement ring he had given her—the mate to the one he wore, that they had picked out together—did work pretty well at repelling unwanted advances from said boys on campus, too, but again, all it did was serve to reduce the annoyance level they caused his fiancée. No one was going to turn her head away from him, and he was positive the reverse was true. He couldn’t even imagine a scenario where he would willingly cheat on her. Ever.

Yep, Will was the happiest he had ever been. And was more miserable than he had ever been about how he had gotten there.

There was no way out of it. Even if it ended his happiness forever, and made the girl he loved hate him, he had to level with her. He’d put it off for far too long. He had to tell her what had happened. What he had done.

Will and Julie were lazing in bed at Will’s house on a pleasant Saturday afternoon. In fact, it was their three month anniversary of getting engaged (the same day he’d zapped her, and they’d first made love), so they had celebrated by making love all morning. Will’s composite family—his Dad, stepmom and stepsister—were off on a weekend trip. Jenny and her Mom Helen were big Taylor Swift fans, and they had convinced his Dad to travel with them to catch a couple of out-of-town concerts on her current tour. They had talked about it, and both Will and Julie had been welcome to come along, but Julie had classes early Monday, and besides, neither of them were really Swifties.

And, of course, they’d both much rather have the house alone, to themselves, all weekend, to enjoy each other, than go deal with crowds and crazy screaming fans. Julie would have pointed out to him that it was just one sign out of many that they were amazingly compatible, from the TV shows and movies they watched, to the music they liked, and even the types of foods they preferred. They were very well suited for each other, shared opinions on most things, and were able to talk freely about almost anything. All points that Will, in his attempt to torture himself, kept overlooking.

“Jules? Sweetheart?” Will had screwed up his courage, and was going to start this conversation.

“Mmm? What, love?” It felt like they used pet names for each other more than their real names, any more. His latest one for her was Jules—rhymes with Jewels—because, he’d explained, she was more precious to him than any jewel. Earning himself a big kiss. Being able to call her pet names like that, and have her smile and respond in real warmth when he did, made him feel wonderful—except when dealing with this topic.

“We need to talk, babe. I... I have a confession to make.”

“So serious?” Julie teased. Then she looked at his face, and saw that he wasn’t teasing. Julie had known Will since they had started high school, they’d been friends for years. She knew that he could be moody, and had learned to read his moods over the years. And, of course, ever since they started going out after graduation, and then started sleeping together, she felt like an expert on Will’s moods. If something was bothering him, she’d do whatever she could to help.

“Okay,” she said. “I see, serious. Go ahead, my love. I’m always here for you, you know.”

“That’s just it,” Will said, his inner torture distorting his normally kind features into a worried mask. “I... I... I’m so sorry, I...”

Julie was beginning to feel alarmed. “Will? You’re scaring me. What is it?”

Looking down, Will repeated “I... I...” Then he looked directly into her eyes, took a deep breath, and just powered through it. “You didn’t love me. I made you love me. I used a machine that can control minds and I made you love me because I wanted to make love with you and make you love me like I love you and it worked we started making love and it’s amazing but it was wrong and I’m having a hard time living with it.”

Julie stared at her fiancé, as he wound down, totally bemused. She knew what he was trying to tell her wasn’t true, certainly not the part about her not loving him before that day they’d started sleeping together, but she didn’t know where had gotten these weird ideas. So she said, calmly but firmly, “Hey—stop it. It’s me. I know you better than anybody, and you’d never, ever hurt me. Ever. So, start at the beginning. Tell me everything.”

So, Will began, in a voice cracked with anguish, telling her about how his early teen interest in hypnosis and mind control erotica had led him to investigate that kind of thing on the dark web, how he had come across the data he needed to put it all together and build a mind control device, and how the only test of it he had ever thought about, as he worked on it, was to use it to get out of the Friend Zone with her.

“Wait—the Friend Zone?”

“Yeah,” Will said. “I was shy when I met you, but I fell in love with you at first sight.” She smiled at him fondly and laughed when he said that. “I’m not kidding. Like my Dad said, I took one look at you, and I told him that I knew who I was going to marry when I grew up. Seriously. When I was what, 13? 14? It made me so happy when we could hang out together, or do things together in groups and stuff. But you always had other boys hanging around you, and you’d go on dates with them, but when I’d try and ask you out, you were always busy or something.”

“Okay... yeah, I guess you and I never did go on dates, back then. We did hang out together a lot, though.”

“Yeah,” Will said. “I enjoyed that, but it was hard, too, you know? Like, you’d talk to me about boys you were dating, what you liked and didn’t like about them. I felt so close to you, but you just wanted me as a friend. You even said so one time, when you complained about a boy who’d said some mean things to you, and I told you that I’d never treat you like that if you were my girlfriend. You just looked at me, shook your head, and said ‘I’d rather have you as my real friend than as my boyfriend.’ I think that was when I sort of gave up trying. Well, okay, I obviously never gave up on loving you, but...“

Julie ed exactly what Will was talking about, so she interrupted her fiancé. “Jimmy Kent had been pressuring me to have sex with him when we were only sophomores. I wasn’t ready yet, and I turned him down. That little toad then spread it around that I had let him fuck me, and that I was an easy lay.” She looked at Will steadily, and said “I liked you too much, even then... If I had gone out with you, you’d have gotten a ton of crap like ‘Did ya fuck Julie yet? Why not, she’s fucked everyone else she’s dated!’” She looked angry, but also reached out and held onto Will as she continued. “I guess I can see, now, how you’d think I was rejecting any, um, romantic ideas you had back then. But that’s not what it was. I’ve thought a lot about it since we got engaged, and... I can see how I avoided being romantic with you because of how much I cared about you, and I didn’t want to get you involved with my, my... reputation. Even if it was unearned. I tried to fix that, later, but things kept getting in the way.”

“Like other boys,” Will pointed out.

“Yeah,” she sighed, “like other boys. And eventually Don. And I was ashamed at the way I’d pushed you away. I... made mistakes. Time ed, and I couldn’t figure out how to undo them. What I did know was that I didn’t want to hurt you, and I was afraid that, if we did start dating, that I would. Or my reputation would. Or something.” She shrugged. “And... OK, I can see how that made you feel Friend Zoned, but, see—I could still spend time with you, and not risk hurting you. I thought. Great scheme, right? I could be with the boy I really liked without risking either one of us getting hurt. It was... another mistake, I know. If it’s any consolation, it was at the cost of having to shove my own romantic feelings for you way back into a closet, for a while. I’m sorry. But they refused to stay locked up, you know.”

But Will didn’t look any better, hearing this. In fact, he looked even more tortured, if that was possible. “That’s just it,” he said. “You probably never did have romantic feelings for me. That device, what it does is it changes the context of things you already know. I programmed it to make you believe that you and I had started dating right after you and Don broke up, after graduation, and that Saturday you came over, it was, um, because you felt we’d been dating long enough that we should, um, start having sex. And the problem is, your mind fits things into the new context. You started ing things that never happened, like feeling romantic towards me in high school, intimate moments with me that we hadn’t had, discussions about your feelings that...“

Julie looked at him and interrupted with “Wait, wait, wait, slow down. We did start dating right after I broke up with Don. You heard about it, and called me to ask if I was doing OK. You suggested we could go out and do stuff, to get my mind off of it.“

“I was just trying to be there for you. Friend Zone or not, you know, now at least, how I’ve always felt.”

“And what discussions have I invented that we never had?”

“Oh, you telling me how much you cared for me when I hung out with you after your break-up. And as we were about to make love for the first time, you thanked me for giving you the time you needed to get over him, before making a move on you. And that you had told me it would be worth the wait.”

“Okay, I get it, now. You weren’t hearing what I had been saying when we started dating then,” to which Will said “But we weren’t!” Julie came back with “There must be acoustic dampening tiles all over that damned Friend Zone, or something,” she said through a grimace, “because I sure thought we were dating. You were taking me to movies, out for food, for walks... those are date things! I wouldn’t have done them if I didn’t want to be dating you! And after our first date—okay, what I’ve been calling our first date, when you took me to the movies—I wanted it to be a good first date for you, so I tried to kiss you. But I was still so messed up over Don, and sex, and my feelings, that I could only manage a peck on the cheek. You made some kind of comment about that not being a kiss, so I gave you quick kiss on the lips, and said I couldn’t do more than that right then, I needed time to sort out, you know, everything. Don’t you those things?”

“Yeah... but, you were getting over Don. You were sort of all over the place for a few days, there, and the kiss thing felt like you were trying to go through the motions with me, and pretend it was Don or something, but couldn’t even manage that. I didn’t want to remind you of him, and I thought making anything we did feel like a date would be too painful right then. So I stopped trying to pretend to be your date, and just wanted to... be with you. Keep you distracted. Make sure you knew other people—that I—cared about you.“

“That’s.... actually very sweet, you know that? But, see, I don’t think you understand about Don—he took my virginity. I thought he was the hottest man on Earth, and that enthusiasm meant that I... trusted him too much. Did too much without thinking about it, first. Blinded me to some things that ought to have opened my eyes. Let him... make me feel bad, and convince me it was my fault. And then, when he decided that Mary Ann Fowler gave better head than I did, so he didn’t want to see me anymore... I was... I was...”

“Furious?” Will suggested.

“Yes. And betrayed. And hurt. And I wondered what I had done wrong, when I can see, now, that I hadn’t done anything except trust a guy because he was hot and rich, not because he cared about me. I was convinced that I’d fucked up. I’d slept with a guy I didn’t love. And who didn’t love or even respect me. He excited me, I could show off that I was dating the rich, hot guy... but I just didn’t... love him. We fucked a lot, for a while there, but,” she said, shaking her head at the thought, “I never once made love with him.” Julie hugged Will tight, and added, “Which was why I was so happy when it was you who stepped up. And rescued me. My heart.”

“But, but, but... you’d never come on to me, or treated me like you thought of me like that!” Will said. “Even on that day three months ago, I had to come up with a lame story about finding something of yours at the high school, and wanting to give it to you, because I was scared you might not want to come over if I had just asked. The, um, device hit us right after I opened the door, and you just melted. I don’t think you had any intention of sleeping with me that day before I, I, I... altered you.”

Julie got a very thoughtful look on her face, and said “Melted? Hmmm. Yeah, you’re right, I did, but, but, you did that, not... wait. Let me think. That day got really intense after I got there, as you may recall, let me run through it in my mind, here.

“I will say, honestly, that I wasn’t expecting that we would have sex when I came over, but I was thinking of you more and more as my boyfriend by that time, so I would have come over just because you asked. But, Will, where I was at that point—I’d been wanting to. Have sex with you, that is. As bad as my break-up was, one of the worst things about it was that I had gotten used to regular nookie, to put it bluntly. I wasn’t going to go crawling back to that creep and beg—not ever—and I wasn’t going to make myself vulnerable to anyone I wasn’t sure of. But... I was getting horny. A lot. And, um... you had become the star and lead actor in my fantasies by then, babe.“

Will was startled a bit out of his self-loathing reverie to hear that. “Really? I never thought of girls having fantasies. Would it creep you out if I told you that you were pretty much the only person I fantasized about in high school? I even that I was surprised you were wearing bikini panties that day, our first time, because I always, um, pictured you in a thong when I’d undress you in my mind. And you were so much more vocal in real life than in my fantasies—I love that so much!”

“See?” Julie asked. “You’re worried that you forced me to love you somehow, as if we haven’t been friends for years, and in each other’s most intimate thoughts. Before you ever even dreamed of that device. That’s one reason I trusted you, I think.”

“And can’t you see? I betrayed that trust by forcing you to fuck me! I’m a damned rapist!” There. He’d said it.

But she wasn’t buying it. “Are you even listening, dear? You are my best friend, my lover, my fiancé, and the father of my future children, mister! I have never done anything with you that I’m ashamed of, or didn’t want to do. Except maybe wait so long to tell you how I felt. So, don’t talk like that, okay?”

“But...”

“Anyway,” Julie interrupted, not wanting Will to get any further down this line of thinking until she could explain some things. “I was horny that day. Before I got there and you zapped me, or whatever. In fact, when you called, I had just pleasured myself, thinking about how nice it would be if you and I could spend the day in bed. And imagining the things I wanted to do with you, once we got there. I was even fantasizing about doing it on this very bed,” she said, thumping the mattress on which they both sat.

“So, I was already kind of charged up, and was hoping that, maybe, when I stopped by, we might end up making out. Or, um, more. Maybe your gizmo amped that up some... okay, maybe a lot... but please believe me, if you had done nothing except ask me over, and your machine never existed, the odds are really high we’d have ended up in bed, anyway. I’m pretty certain of it.”

“You see?” Will started in again. “It did affect you! I’m...”

“Let me finish, love. When I asked you what you had for me, yeah—I did get a flash of thinking that what I wished you had for me was a nice, thick cock. Maybe that was your machine’s doing, but—please hear this—I had just been imagining it, on my own, earlier in the day.

“But, babe, that’s not when I melted. It wasn’t your machine. I’ll tell you what made me melt. It was when you stepped forward, hugged me to you, and told me what you had for me—one word. You said ‘Me.’ That was the sweetest, the most romantic, the most loving, and the most damned SEXY thing anyone had ever said to me. Ever. That one word.

“I’m trying to tell you, dear,” Julie said tenderly, “it couldn’t have been getting zapped with your device that melted me. Because it was that one word that did it. I’d waited so long... all of high school, all of the times I wanted you to notice me, all the times I’d prayed that my first time would be with you... they all flooded through me, every loving—and yes, every horny—thought I’d had about you for years. And I knew this was right, that you were the guy I really wanted. You weren’t the hot guy I wanted to show off and fuck, you were the guy I wanted to make love with, night after night. Forever.

“And I was finally where it felt like I had my head sorted out. I’d been so afraid to open up again, to anyone. But... when you stepped up, my feelings for you had popped right back out of the box I’d shoved them in. And I’d been wanting... you. More and more.” She laughed, as something occurred to her, and said, “Just like I wrote in my diary.“

“But, see, the machine FORCED you to think—wait, what? Diary?”

“I have it in my purse, babe, I always carry it with me if I’m going to stay the night. I make an entry every morning. Let me show you.”

Julie pulled out her diary and opened it. It flopped open to the day after they’d first gotten together, which was filled with little hearts and about a thousand different ways of writing “Wow!” The way it opened right up to that page, it appeared that she re-read it a fair amount. She blushed a little, then flipped back to the day after what she was calling her first date with Will, weeks before they’d gotten engaged. She handed it to him, pointed out the date of the entry, and told him to read it to her. All with the air of a defense attorney who’s had the piece of evidence to exonerate her client in her back pocket all day, just waiting for the right time to spring it on the court.

Will looked flustered, though he also knew that showing him her most raw, intimate thoughts in her diary couldn’t have been easy for her. The amount of trust it showed reminded him that he didn’t feel worthy of her trust, right then. But he did as he was asked, reading aloud, “Dear Diary, first off, I finally got my period yesterday. It’s not like there had been any condom failures with Don since my last period, but it was comforting to know for sure that nothing could possibly have happened. What a terrible thing that would have been! Maybe more important, Will took me out on a date last night. Finally! It felt so good to be with him. I’m finally starting to really understand how much I’ve loved and counted on him, ever since we were freshmen.” Will stopped reading, confused, looked up at Julie, and said “You wrote this before we got engaged?“

“Yeppers! Read on.”

And he did. “Of course, being on a date reminded me how attracted I am to him, but when I tried to kiss him afterwards, that creep Donny flashed before my eyes, and it made it SO difficult. I’ve liked Will for so long, but I’m ashamed of how carried away I got with Don just because he was rich, and I thought he was hot. And to make the cool girls jealous. I need to get my head straight about this, or I’ll never be able to get with Will, and I really want to.” Will saw she had drawn three lines under the word “really.” “I asked him to give me time, but... it really felt good, being with him. I want to keep dating him. Not to mention, I’m horny as hell and can’t imagine going to bed with anyone else, right now. I just hope he doesn’t think I’m damaged goods or something because of how I acted with the creep. I made so many bad decisions, I hope they haven’t ruined my chances with the guy I’m finding out is the one I’ve really wanted all along.”

All written, Will saw, a good three weeks before he’d zapped her.

Julie gave him a triumphant look that screamed “See, what did I tell you?!” Will looked at her, an abashed aura settling over him. “So... you’re telling me that... all my device did was... to give each of us the courage to take that next step? That you really cared for me all along?”

“Yes, you idiot! I have my diaries all the way back to when I was 10! If you make me, I’ll show you where I started writing ‘Mrs. Julie Carpenter’ all over them, back when we were freshmen! Are you going to make me humiliate myself like that!?” Julie was trying to sound angry, but had a huge smile on her face as she reached for her diary back.

“I thought I saw that name on the page your diary flopped open, to, as well, babe,” Will said with something of a grin.

“We had just gotten engaged, love,” Julie said. “You can’t blame me for doing it then,” she smiled. She then collected her boyfriend up for a long, slow, loving kiss, and said “But, um... this device could be, um, interesting, maybe? Assuming we use it together?”

“What? Really? You’ve been trying to tell me it didn’t work!”

“I didn’t say that. I said that it couldn’t coerce me into becoming your girlfriend, because, in my own context, to use your word, I already was, or at least would be if I had the nerve to let it happen. Or make it happen. It didn’t make me want to sleep with you, because I already wanted to. It didn’t make me love you, because I already did!

“I think it’s sort of like hypnotizing someone to want a wonderful meal—I guess you could, but wouldn’t you want that wonderful meal anyway? Maybe my whatchamacallit, my context, around you did change a little—instead of being cautious, or waiting until you made the first move, it motivated me to throw caution to the wind, and bring it to a head. We were going to start making love, or I was going to demand a very good answer as to why not. Maybe I would have been more cautious without your machine. But my diary proves that all you were doing was trying to make me into someone who loved you, and—listen carefully and hear this,” she said, taking his head into her hands, “I already was that person.

“If your device did anything, it was to get everything out in the open, give you the courage to make the best move I could ever have imagined,” Julie began to softly weep, “and give me the brains to not fuck it up by rejecting you again!” And Will, who had been accusing himself of such horrible things, held the woman he loved, as she cried. “I’d been so afraid I’d run away from you, when what I wanted to do with all my heart was run towards you,” she whispered to him. “That would have been... the worst mistake of them all.”

They held each other for some time, simply drinking in the relief that, no matter what, they had each other. And that nothing was ever going to change that. And, in a twist that Will couldn’t have imagined, Julie was not only not upset that he had zapped her, she was actually, genuinely pleased at how it had all turned out—though extremely insistent that she hadn’t been altered in any way that made any real difference—and somewhat intrigued by the process. So, as her tears dried in the comfort of her lover’s arms, Julie’s naturally inquisitive mind went back to Will’s device.

“Sweetheart? There’s something I was wondering,” she began.

“What, love?”

“Well, you said your device’s beams hit both of us. You didn’t try to program yourself to want to be your own boyfriend, after all. What was that all about?”

“Oh, see,” Will explained, “men’s and women’s brains operate on slightly different frequencies; the device can be set to target a male and a female with different command sets simultaneously.”

“So... what command set did you set for yourself?”

“Let’s see—that I would be aware that my contexts may have changed, so I could compare my thoughts before and after. Scientific research, you know.” Julie mouthed a skeptical “Hah!” but left it at that. “And that I was doing this because I wanted you and I to be together as boyfriend and girlfriend, and that I was confident in my feelings for you.”

“Is that all, lover boy?”

“Okay, you got me. Also, that, um, when I’m with you, I will have total control on when and how I cum. So I could, um, be a better lover for you. Last longer.”

Julie laughed, then got a serious expression, thinking about his “confession,” and said “I want you to understand something, Will. Seriously. A rapist doesn’t try to change his own brain so that he can be a better lover for his victim. Get that whole bullshit idea out of your head. Everything you did—everything—screams that it was done out of your love for me. Especially the ability to hold your cum until your lady has come a couple dozen times,” she added with a grin and a sparkle.

“OK, I guess I can accept that.” He thought about it a little more, and added “But there’s one thing about it that was, um, unexpected.”

“Hmm? About being able to hold off nutting?”

“Yeah. when we first made love? You were on top, you’d already had your first orgasm cluster”—Julie smiled, she loved how he called the way she came with him a “fireworks show,” even though she had never been like that before—“and were working towards your second. You told me you wanted me to cum with you, and when you said ‘Right NOW!’ I blew my load, just like that. It wasn’t my decision. It was yours! So, guess what? I didn’t try to set it up this way, and I have no idea how it happened, but it seems that now I can wait to cum until I decide I want to—or until you tell me to!”

“Mmmmm... that sure explains a few things! And I will that, from now on, my love!” Looking very mischievous, she leaned into him and teased, “So, I got a brain, and you got courage AND an obedient penis, huh, my Cowardly Lion?” Will tried to roar back at her, but the noise he made immediately set them both to laughing.

Still thinking about the device, the next thing Julie asked was “So... that device, it’s still hooked up?”

“Yep,” Will said. “The projector is attached to the Ding Doorbell Camera control unit over the front door, and the controls are on my laptop. Why, did you want to try something?”

“Well, I was just thinking, maybe I want a little more practice in recognizing what having my, um, context changed feels like. This is a little crazy, but the thought of using it is actually turning me on. I think I’m beginning to share your mind control kink—at least a little. Maybe we could, I don’t know, add appreciations for some kind of fetishes or things that we might like to explore?”

“Yeah, let’s look at what we’ve got,” Will said, firing up the laptop. “If you want to do this, let’s make sure we always let ourselves be aware that we’ve changed something, and what it is, just in case we decide to back out of it later...”

“Great idea. And before we start,” Julie said, “first, I want your promise you’ll never use this on me again unless I know about it, and I’ll make the same promise back. Deal?”

“Deal!” Will said.

“And second, you kept insisting that you forced me to love you. Now that we have this thing open and I can look at it, show me this, what did you call it? This command set you loaded into me. It’s still in here, right?”

“Um, yeah. Here you go. This is just the English equivalent, the actual commands are translated into neural encoding.” Will was amazed at how much he trusted this woman, handing her the controller to what, if she had felt he had wronged her, could give her the tool to exact horrendous revenge. But, like she had told him when he tried to confess his sins to her, he knew her, too, now. Through and through. She was no more capable of harming him on purpose, now, than he was of harming her. It was a simple impossibility.

“Okay, thanks! Now, let’s see—hmmm. You’re my boyfriend, OK, dating, OK. Find you attractive, like you a lot, wanna have sex, like being naked, confident in bed... fine, those were all pre-existing things, and feelings I had for you, before you zapped me. Except maybe the ‘confident in bed’ thing, that might have been an upgrade. It’s something I really like, anyway, and if it was your machine’s doing, then thank you! I love how honest and confident we are with each other. It’s amazing! And after some of my poorer decisions, well, it makes me feel like I’ve made up for them. At least some.

“What else... Hmph. See? You said nothing in here about making me love you. Closest thing is this wanting to ‘belong’ to you, ‘mind, body and soul’ line. And that’s not encouraging the kind of love I feel for you, babe. It’s encouraging, I don’t know, slavery or something. I’m sorry to disappoint you, darling, but that one was a bit of a fizzle. If anything, the way I feel is that we belong to each other. Mutually. Equally. No owner/property or master/slave connotations to it. More like, we retain exclusive rights on each other in perpetuity,” she said, dimpling.

“Oh? After you thanked me for waiting for you, and we were about to start—I mean, you were on top of me, my cock was sliding back and forth across your pussy lips—you did say you wanted to be mine, now. That’s the same wording...”

“I meant I wanted to be your lover. Not Don’s, not anyone else’s. I wanted to be your steady fuck date, okay, you moron?!” she laughed. “I wanted... to be a part of your life. A part of you. Because I already felt like you were a part of me. But not a part of, I don’t know, some kind of collection or something! Besides,” she said, the proper proof of her point occurring to her, “who said what right after that, huh?”

“Um, yeah,” Will said. “I did burst out with that ‘I’ve always loved you’ line, didn’t I? You didn’t notice,” he said, looking at his feet, “but I panicked right after that. As confident as I was about how I felt, that’s the kind of thing you say to someone just after you make love with them for the first time, not right before!“

Julie still looked like she didn’t believe him. “Panicked? I was naked, on top of you, and lining you up, baby. How in the world could you think that telling me you loved me at that moment was a cause for panic?” She shook her head in disbelief, but also smiled at him.

“I dunno,” Will said. “I was afraid that, if you were just, like, responding to the sex things, but didn’t really care about me deep down, that it might have scared you off.”

“And what did I do, after you said that? I started making love with you! I settled myself down onto you! It was exactly what I wanted! I’d been wanting it for weeks! I’d brought myself off earlier that day just imagining it! Really, what did I say at the exact moment I was showing you with my body how I felt? I said ‘I love you, too.’ That’s what I said!” Julie laughed and shook her head. “If you made me love you, if there was some part of your command set that you think brought me from not caring for you to caring, wouldn’t that have made me say it first?! Wouldn’t I have been spouting whatever you had programmed me to say, without being scared to say it...?” Julie abruptly stopped, and mouthed the word “scared,” almost to herself, as if it had been a revelation. When she spoke again, she was hushed, and very sincere. “But, Will... I said it after you told me you loved me. Because... because I was scared, too. Was I having sex with you to try and make you love me? To make you my lover and my partner, without even asking first? I didn’t know. After Don, I didn’t trust my own motivations.

“I just knew how much I cared, and how much I wanted to express it. When you told me, now maybe THAT was when you coerced me.”

“Huh?”

“It let me say it back to you. I loved you before then, but even though I thought you cared for me... I wasn’t sure. I couldn’t be sure. Not sure enough. Not after Don. I mean, I knew, but I didn’t know, if that makes any sense. And I was so scared of making the same mistakes I had with Don. Even though I’d already decided to... to use sex to say how much I loved you, because I was so afraid of saying the words.

“But don’t you see? You made it right. Not with your device. By telling me you loved me. Sweetheart, it was like a weight had been lifted, from my shoulders, and from my heart. And suddenly, I was able to say what was in my heart, tell you that I love you. It was so natural, so right, so... so true. That right there was the final turning point, for me. The point of no return, maybe. Not your device. You having the courage to tell me you loved me. Knowing, being certain, that I was making the right choice.”

“You still weren’t sure?” Will asked. “Even then?”

“I was sure that I wanted, I needed to have sex with you, needed to show you how I felt, but... How do I put this? Being able to hear you loved me, and being able to say it back, it changed what we were about to do. We weren’t just going to fuck, even if that’s what I thought I wanted to do, right then. Suddenly, it was making love. And, the uncertainty was that, if it had been just fucking, then maybe I wasn’t making a good decision again, you see? But it wasn’t. Just fucking. That I wanted, with you.

“Look at it this way, babe. You get fucked by a cock, you make love with a whole person. And I had never done that. I’d had sex, and enjoyed it, but... it wasn’t making love. I discovered that what I wanted was to make love with you. And suddenly, that’s what it was. The love made all of the difference, babe. I, I... suddenly felt light as a feather. I’d been trudging along, carrying that fear of fucking it up again, for so long that I hadn’t noticed how heavy of a weight life had become. Even before the break-up. But at that moment, with you? I swore I could fly.”

ing it made them both feel momentarily weightless again, just from reminiscing about it.

“A weight lifted, you say?” Will said. “When you told me you loved me back, I felt like the Heavenly Chorus was singing Hallelujah over us, in 12-part harmony, and we were floating somewhere above the Moon. So, yeah—point taken, love. We were having nearly the same moment at the same time, I think. And it occurred to me, later, that, in my fantasies of you, we always declared our love before we’d consummate it. So, in my own context, I guess I was craving more than just sex, with you, too. It seems we were both of us looking to make love, and not just have sex, that day.

“But, honestly, you didn’t answer me right away, like that,” Will said.

“I didn’t?”

“No. I told you that, before we could have sex, you needed to know that I loved you, and that I had loved you for as long as I could . You pulled a Princess Leia on me, you said ‘I know.’ THEN you said ‘I love you, too.’” Will’s eyes teared up, reliving that moment, because it was an emotional thing for him. It was the moment they’d totally leveled with each other about how they felt. Even though they did not consummate their love until a moment later, that was the moment, in his mind, that the two of them became one.

“I , now. I think I said that because, right then, I had been thinking to myself that I knew you cared, I did, I just needed to know for certain. And when you said it, it just came out of my mouth, that yes, now I knew. I could be certain. Then, what had scared me so much to say, it just flowed out of me, and I said I loved you, too, then... then our bodies merged so gloriously, and once you were inside of me, I said it again. A few times. And,” she said, grinning helplessly at him, “as often as I could, since then.“

Julie looked at Will, and then said, very seriously, “Listen. I loved you before we started to make love, and I loved you after. I loved you when we were 14, I loved you when you rescued my heart after I broke up with Don, I loved you BEFORE your machine zapped me, and I love you now. But I will it,” she said, slyly, “while I was more than ready to become your lover, the more I think about it, I think your machine did give my libido a boost that day. Before you zapped me, I wanted to see if I could talk you into a make-out session. In your bed. I was so ready. Hoping I could show you how I felt that way. Hoping,” she said, gesturing all around herself, “for what we have now, honestly. Though I had no idea it could be like this. Our lives now, they’re so much more than I’d ever imagined.

“Anyway, I think what it did was, after you zapped me, I wasn’t just hoping. I saw what I wanted, and I was going to have it! I was bound and determined that we weren’t parting that day until we had made love—no, actually, until I had shown you that I loved you, with my body. If I couldn’t say it, by God, at least I would show it! Then, of course, you made it so I could say it, and it turned into so much more... But, see? Same desire, same likely outcome. Just maybe amped up higher than I’d normally be.”

“Okay, okay, I believe you! You love me, and I didn’t force you!”

“Thank you! I don’t want to hear that from you ever again, OK? But,” Julie said, “speaking of amped up, let’s see what we can come up with for this fetish thing I have in mind...”

Will and Julie sat at the laptop, crafting a command set for each of them. Will loaded it into the system, turned it on, and—realizing that they’d been having another heartfelt discussion totally nude—said “Let’s at least throw some robes on, babe—we have to open the front door to activate it, after all.”

The couple scampered down the stairs, Will made sure everything was ready, and opened the door. A pale blue light glittered around them for a moment, and Will shut the door again.

Then they grinned at each other, ran back up to Will’s bedroom, and engaged in a session where Julie spent a half hour rimming Will—something he had always wanted to try, but wasn’t sure he’d like (and of course, he loved it), and then, after a little while, they started a doggy style session, as it was a great position for Will to slide his index finger into Julie’s asshole, something she had never allowed him, or really anyone, to do before. She grunted as he sawed his finger in one hole while his cock pounded the other—he was amazed at being able to feel his own cock pounding in and out of his love’s vagina with the finger he had in her ass. He found it very hot.

Finally, to top off Julie’s experimentation in ass play, after cumming from the pounding she was getting, she said in a shaky voice, “Okay... I’m ready... put your cock in my ass. Please, I want it in my ass...” Will complied immediately, and Julie, with the help of a tiny change to her context about ass play, began to build up towards an epic orgasm again, until, as she started to cum while getting a nice ass-fucking—something she had never done before—Will was startled when his fiancée’s voice rang out, “C.. c... cum... NOW!” and he immediately began pumping his semen deep into her bowels.

Collapsed into a puddle after their exertions, Julie glanced at her man, and panted “Okay, I... believe... you... too. It... works... for some things... really... fucking... well!”

A few days later, Will and Julie were snuggling after more absolutely incredible lovemaking, which always seemed to bond them even further, every time. Will already felt so bonded with Julie that he couldn’t imagine getting even moreso, but somehow it kept happening. And he knew for certain it had nothing to do with any command set he’d ever loaded into himself. It wasn’t artificial. It was a synergy between them, now. The two of them, combined, made more loving energy in their lives than the sum of their parts. If that didn’t make them blessed, he didn’t know what would.

Will could see that Julie was looking a bit pensive in her afterglow, and asked what she was thinking about.

“I didn’t want to say anything until I was sure, sweetheart, but... we started making love about three months ago, right?”

“Yep—early June, 14 weeks and some days ago, I think. But who’s counting?”

“I’ve been counting—something. You might not have noticed, babe, because you grew up without women in the house, but, um... I haven’t had a period since then.”

Will’s heart skipped a beat or three—was she saying what he thought she was saying?

“So, I went and got this, and used it this morning, and... well, look.”

She pulled a used home pregnancy test from her purse, and handed it to him. With the big plus sign and the word PREGNANT in its display window.

Will looked back at his fiancée, who was laughing and crying at the same time. He said “Oh, my God, Jules—really?”

“Really!” his amazing fiancée—maybe more accurately, soon-to-be legal spouse—replied. “By the 4th of July, I suspected I might be pregnant, because I was expecting my period about two weeks after our first time, but it never came. And of course, even then, neither of us has ever been able to bear the thought of using condoms. They remind me too much of Donny, anyway.”

“So you think...?”

“Yes, my love. We hit on a baby the first chance we got. I’d had a couple of condom failures with Don,” Julie said, now totally comfortable speaking to Will about things that had happened with other guys, a testament to their love from both of them. “But when nothing happened and my period came anyway, I figured I’d maybe have to see a fertility doctor, when I eventually wanted to start a family. Which was why I wasn’t too worried not using any birth control. I really didn’t think that just having unprotected sex was likely to get me pregnant.

“Maybe it wasn’t smart, I don’t know, but... I’m so happy to know I’m fertile!” Then another thought occurred to her, and she said, very seriously, “Maybe it’s just that I knew, deep down, that I never wanted to have kids with Don, so my body wasn’t receptive to conceiving with him. With him, it terrified me to think of getting pregnant accidentally, and the couple of scares we had... I get sick just thinking about them. What that could have trapped me into.

“But, if you’ll recall from my diary, I got my last period the same day as our first I-say-it-was-a-date movie date. And you know I didn’t come within a mile of anyone else’s bed from then until we started sharing one, babe. There’s absolutely no doubt, whatsoever, that the baby’s ours—yours and mine.

“But babe—and I’m pretty sure this had nothing to do with your machine, either—from the moment we started to make love, and I was aware we weren’t using condoms, the idea of getting pregnant wasn’t terrifying. It was appealing! Yeah, maybe my horny-meter had been turned up to 11, but still... it was like someone was whispering in my ear, telling me ‘This is the man you want to make babies with.’ So that, plus my doubts about my own fertility, meant I was absolutely fine doing what we did. I figured that, even if I did end up pregnant from being with you, well, it was just meant to be. And thinking about it made me feel warm and happy, not worried in the least.”

Will was still feeling gobsmacked by the news. “Our first child! Oh, my God, Jules... I didn’t think I could love you any more than I already did.” He kissed her deeply. “I’m so happy you keep proving me wrong. But, yeah—getting you knocked up was NOT a part of the command set! Nothing anti-condom or anti-birth control in those commands anywhere! Nothing about wanting to get pregnant, either! You... we did that all on our own, love.“

“I would have said something sooner, babe, but my periods have always been a little irregular, so going for two or three months between them, especially in the summer, for some reason, has happened before. And, I don’t know how I got this lucky, but I never got any morning sickness or anything. My sex drive seemed fine, if maybe a little high, but I had other reasons for that, too,” she said with a wink and a glow. “There was nothing out of the ordinary, except that I hadn’t had my period for a while, so I really wasn’t convinced.

“I started feeling tired, a couple of weeks ago, maybe a little more than normal, but I thought that was just the change in my schedule when I started taking my college classes. And, yeah, maybe I’ve been eating a little more than normal, but again, I thought that was just getting used to my new schedule. And you know the old saying, food equals sleep, so if I didn’t feel like I was getting enough rest, I figured maybe I was just compensating by eating a little more.

“But, then, I noticed this a couple of days ago. Here, look,” Julie said, and she pulled up her shirt, laid flat on her back and traced her belly curves. Her hand came to rest on the little bump centered under her belly button that Will had noticed, but ascribed to her more enthusiastic eating habits, lately. And that, like everything about her, he found amazingly attractive. “See that bump? That’s not from eating too many Twinkies, love. That’s my baby bump. I saw that, and that brought me from not being convinced, to being almost certain. So, I went and got three home pregnancy tests, just to make sure. Didn’t even bother with two of them, after getting such a strong positive on the first one.”

Totally overwhelmed, Will leaned down and kissed her on the tummy. “A kiss for you, and a kiss for our child as well.”

“You are the sweetest man alive, I swear. But, it occurs to me, Will... in of child rearing... we might want to consider more beneficial uses for your device. Think about it—beautiful, smart children... who BEHAVE!”

They looked at each other at that remark, and burst out laughing. Then they kissed each other warmly, and started to talk about pushing up the wedding plans. And how to tell their families!

“It’s time to get the piece of paper, I think, love,” Julie said. “I know for SURE that my Mom is going to want us to be married before the baby is born. And I think we have three choices, in of a wedding. We can have it soon, like in the next month, and then I won’t look preggers in the wedding pictures...”

“I don’t care if you’re pregnant in our wedding pictures,” Will said. “I’m quite taken with your bump even now.”

“Yeah, but how are you going to explain it to Cletus?”

“Who?”

“Cletus the Fetus! Since we don’t have another name for him, yet,” she said, with a mischievous grin. “Or her. Second, we can have it over the holidays, when I will be getting big as a house. Or, we could wait until next summer, and just have the baby attend as a guest, but again, I want to keep my folks happy.“

“There’s one more option,” Will said. “We can go get married at City Hall, and have the big church wedding sometime later, without any schedule pressure. I know you and I don’t care about the marriage license so much, since the way I’d put it is that we’re mated for life already. I know that if someone said you’re not my wife, right now, I’d argue with them.”

“Yeah, babe. But we have to think of the outside world. Especially our folks. And it’s also for the kids. It’s, I don’t know, a part of the social contract. It’s best to have the marriage license when having your children, I think, if not for your own peace of mind, at least so no one can judge you or your kids over it. You know I don’t need you to sign a piece of paper before I’ll believe that you’re committed to me. But, in all sorts of ways, it just feels like the right thing to do.” Looking a little wistful, Julie added “I do like the idea of telling everyone you’re my husband, though. Maybe it’s just that I listened to all the pro-marriage propaganda so much growing up, so that being Mrs. Carpenter to the rest of the world, sounds really good, to me. It’s really what I want. And these days, it implies that I own you just as much as you own me, right?

“So, yeah, let’s go ahead and have a small civil ceremony, just have my folks and your family there. And do that soon, like right after we tell our folks. Because, I know my Mom, especially, will accept me being pregnant a lot easier if I’m marrying the baby’s father ASAP, if you know what I mean,” Julie said. “But I’m pretty sure we can talk them into doing the big church wedding later. Maybe next summer?” Thinking about it a moment, she added, “It’s strange, though, talking about a wedding, when for me, in my heart, it feels like we got the ’til-death-do-us-part thing wrapped up, between the two of us, back in June.”

“Feels like that to me, too, love,” Will agreed. “And, in my experience, big church weddings certainly aren’t for the bride and the groom, they’re for the families. The license isn’t even for us, it’s for people, like schools and landlords, who need to see a piece of paper before they’ll legally accept us as a family, and treat us that way. Also, having the big to-do next summer means the wedding pictures from the church wedding will feature my trim, sexy wife.”

“Just, um, understand that, like I’ve told you, a part of me really is a girly girl,” Julie reminded him. “I do want the experience of wearing a wedding dress, having my Dad give me away, and all that. So, the church wedding is something I want. Just not yet. Not in a rush. I want to savor it.”

“Oh, I’d never deny you the thrill of walking down the aisle, love. But again, that’s something we’ll do for its own sake, not because we need that to make us feel married. However, one of these days, I’ll tell you all about the fantasies I used to have of carrying you over the threshold of the Bridal Suite,” Will said with a grin.

“One other thing that getting a City Hall marriage soonest does—it would let us live together in the married student dorm, starting next term,” he said, getting back to their planning. “Because I’m thinking I want to start college in spring session, not wait a whole year. You don’t mind if your high school boyfriend follows you to the same college, right?”

“Don’t say that,” Julie said, trying to look cross. “You were NOT my high school boyfriend. You rescued my heart after I had picked the WRONG high school boyfriend.” She couldn’t keep up a pretense of anger, though, when it came to what she said next—she absolutely glowed when she said “and yes, I would be delighted to marry you in the next week or two, my love, thanks for asking!” She gave him a wink. “But... about the married student dorm. I want to start living together sooner than January. Like, now. Or at least, as soon as we can.”

“You know I want that, too, Jules,” Will said, “but why is it such a priority now? January is just three months or so down the road.”

“Three months is one whole trimester of a pregnancy, babe,” Julie said. “Even though I sailed through my first trimester without even really being sure I was expecting, I have been getting fatigued, having some odd food cravings, and eating more, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. That kind of thing. That means the changes happening in my body have gone from barely noticeable, to getting more and more obvious by the day. At least to me, anyway. I guess that’s common at the start of the second trimester. This is when the fetus really starts to grow. Which starts to open the door for some kinds of complications. And I’ll already be starting my third trimester by January,” she said. “Plus, I guess I’m being selfish. I want my system as close to me from now on as possible. Just in case. That means you, babe, first and foremost.”

“Okay,” Will said, ceding the point. “But it’s not like we can get an off-campus apartment right away, the college only lets you live in the dorms or at home until you’re a junior. What are you thinking?”

“Both your folks and my folks have offered to let us both live with them,” Julie said. “But, as much as I love my folks, I think they only offered because they thought it was the right thing to do. I don’t think they’d be in love with both of us living with them, especially with me expecting. Whereas, your folks and Jenny seem like they’d love to see me here every day. I’d love it, too. They’ve become a big part of my system. So... is it OK if I come live here with you? Move the rest of my clothes and stuff here? I would feel so much better living with you, your folks and Jenny for the rest of my term.”

“It’s absolutely fine with me! But, um, won’t you feel self-conscious, making love here while everyone else is home? Or,” he said, suddenly afraid of a possibility that had just now occurred to him, “do you need to abstain from sex, or anything like that, until after the baby comes?” He would respect her wishes, of course, but since he had never really been around pregnant women before he wasn’t sure how it impacted their sex lives.

“You don’t know much about pregnancy, do you, dear? Pregnancy hormones have this side effect. They can push your libido through the roof! Which may be why I can’t get enough of a certain handsome guy, right now... But don’t worry, until the last month or so, anyway, maybe later, no problem! I have a cousin who’s had three kids, and she bragged to me once about how much fun her husband and she had, making love literally the day before she’d go into labor. So... I think we’ll be OK, stud,” she said with a wink. “Assuming I don’t gross you out when I get really big.”

“That’s never gonna happen, darling,” Will assured her. “I’m more in love with the person you are inside than the body you have outside, although I plead guilty to thinking you’re the most amazingly beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

“Still the sweetest man in the world, I see,” Julie replied with a smile that made her dimples pucker incredibly cutely. “And as for being self-conscious, honey, we’ve been bringing each other off like crazy, right here in this bed, for three months! I’m way less self-conscious here than I would be at my folks’ house,” she said with a laugh. “Besides, you know I stayed overnight here a lot last summer. I’m even using part of your dresser’s underwear drawer, now, aren’t I?” she asked with a wink. “And most of the nights I’ve slept over, your parents and sister have been home. Never stopped us from making love then. And I seem to one night where the two of us, your folks, and your sister and her boyfriend, were competing as to how loud we could be. And I don’t mean by leaving the TV volume turned up!”

They smiled at each other over that one—after the pains they had been taking to make love quietly and unobtrusively when in his bedroom and when the rest of his family was home, it had happened one night that Will’s Dad and stepmom began having really loud sex. It wasn’t like anyone in the house could avoid hearing a little of the others having bedtime fun, before, but this was really loud. Helen sounded like she hadn’t had an orgasm all year, and was trying to make up for it in one night. It so happened that Jenny had her boyfriend George over that night, too, and shortly their bedsprings weren’t just squeaking, it sounded like the bed was jumping up and down off the floor, while Jenny was screaming out how hard she was cumming. Will and Julie had laughed, she’d asked him “Shall we?” and in not very many more minutes, Julie’s fireworks show screams—it must have been the 4th of July Finale—were piercing through the house, louder than anyone’s. Will’s Dad and Helen had the decency to look sheepish the next morning, but when Jenny came to the breakfast table announcing “I hereby proclaim Julie the Gold Medal winner of the Screaming Orgasm Olympics!” everyone laughed so hard that all traces of embarrassment vanished.

Will and Julie decided they should get themselves an obstetrician, and get a good estimate of Julie’s due date, before they told their folks. The college’s health services set that up very quickly, and in less than two weeks, Julie had an appointment, and an ultrasound. The doctor, based on the size and development of the fetus, could tell that the due date was roughly March 5th, give or take a week. They also got several print-outs of the ultrasound screen, so they even had several images of their baby, enough to give one each to his folks, and hers. Several of the pictures also revealed one more thing—that they were growing a little boy inside Julie. They could tell from his little baby wee-wee that, even at three months, was clearly visible.

You could sometimes determine the sex of a baby via ultrasound as early as 14 weeks, but it was more common to be able to tell the gender after 18 weeks, the doctor told them. Assuming a June 6 conception date (the earliest possible), the ultrasound was taken a day short of 16 weeks into the pregnancy. The doctor said Julie could be at as few as 14 weeks, but that in her opinion, she thought they should baseline it at 16 weeks, at the time of the ultrasound. The timing was fairly conclusive, Julie thought.

“Our first time was early June,” she said. “As far as I can tell, this due date, and the baby’s state of development, confirms what I’ve been thinking. You got me pregnant the first chance you got, stud!”

“Now, maybe, maybe not,” Will said. “It’s not like we made love that one day, and not again for a month. I seem to recall that we started making love pretty much every day, after that.”

“Not every day,” she protested. But then grinned and said “Well, okay, five or six days a week,” she itted. “And, um, four or five times a day, on the days we managed it...?”

“Pretty much like now, yeah, except that now you’re spending more time at class and studying. In any event, lots of opportunities there, darling. It could have happened any time in those first few weeks,” Will concluded.

“Oh, I guess,” Julie said, obviously still not convinced, “but it’s a much more romantic story this way, don’t you think, love?”

They told her folks, first. They were really happy, but were sorry that Julie had decided to stay with Will at his folks’ house, since Julie had been living at home with them while going to college. But she was already sleeping over at Will’s more than half the time anyway, and the families only lived about a 10-minute drive apart, so it wasn’t like they wouldn’t all see each other frequently. Will’s Dad had already had the Halls over for a weekend barbeque, and Julie’s Dad was preparing to return the favor, so it appeared that the families were going to get along quite well, too. Maybe even more importantly, Julie’s family always opened their presents on Christmas Eve, while Will’s family tradition was to do so on Christmas morning. As far as holiday scheduling is concerned, you couldn’t get more complementary in-laws than that, Will thought.

Julie’s Mom seemed a little disappointed that her daughter had gotten pregnant before finishing her education, but both Will and Julie reassured her that they were committed to finishing college, even while managing a child at home. They even figured out how to sync their college time—Julie would take off the spring semester, to focus on having the baby, and Will would start taking classes then. Julie would have the baby, and be able to come back to school the following fall, when both she and Will would be attending together. Barring her getting pregnant again immediately, it meant that they could graduate together. That seemed to be a satisfactory answer for his prospective mother-in-law, who was happy that they were indeed planning for their future, not just rushing headlong into it with their eyes closed.

Will especially wanted to avoid any friction between Julie’s folks and himself—he’d knocked up their daughter, after all. The next time they went to visit her folks, though, he knew it would be all right—they’d had the ultrasound screenshot Julie had given them framed, because it was their first picture of their first grandchild.

When it came to telling Will’s composite family, Will and Julie were having dinner with them, e day after they had told Julie’s parents. Will suggested getting three pregnancy tests, run them all to get the positive result readout, and set one on each of his family’s plates, but Julie shot that down as being too theatrical. Besides, she’d already peed on one stick, wasn’t that enough? she’d asked him with a grin. They decided to, first, formally accept the offer for Julie to move in with them, and then tell them about the pregnancy. Why hit them with both in one breath?

So, over the mashed potatoes and gravy, Will told them, “Julie and I wanted to talk with you guys about something. We decided we want to be living together now, not in a year or two, and I know you’ve offered. She’s been staying over half the time anyway. So, is it OK if Julie moves in with me here? Obviously, we’ll share my bedroom.”

Will’s Dad nodded, and Helen let out an enthusiastic “Of course! You are very welcome here, dear. Consider it your home.”

Julie nodded, looking happy and relieved that the question was settled. “Thank you, ma’am. We’ve already mentioned it as a possibility to my folks, and they gave us their blessings, too,” she said. Though the full scope of what they had given their blessings to hadn’t been mentioned here, quite yet.

Jenny was pumped. She and Julie had liked each other even back in high school, where Jules was a year ahead of Jen. “I never thought I’d manage to have you as my sister!” she said gleefully. “Now we can, like, do our nails together and talk about boys!”

Julie said “Yeah! Except, for me, I’m not into boys anymore. I only really want to talk about,” she glanced at Will, “my man.” She grabbed Will’s hand as she said it.

“It’s just an expression, sis,” Jenny said. “I only have eyes for my own guy, anyway. But it doesn’t mean I’m not excited to be your sister every day! Besides, with one more person living here, everyone’s chores list gets shorter, right?” Jen had all the angles covered, she thought.

“Of course! I was already planning on doing my share of chores, too, I just hadn’t brought it up yet.” Julie paused, and then, giving Will a look that said “It’s time to tell them,” she added, “For as long as I can, anyway.”

Jenny looked at Julie sideways, and then stared suspiciously at Julie’s belly. Was her bump obvious, Will wondered? But it was Helen who asked, “As long as you can?”

“Well, you see,” Julie said, “There’s a little more news. Will and I have decided to go down to City Hall next week, or at least the first day we can get my folks and all of you to come with us, and get married. We can have the church wedding later, maybe as early as next summer. But we want all of you to be there when we actually get legally married.”

Helen’s mouth made a small, O, closed, and then, as a light bulb winked on over her head, her eyes widened and she smiled very broadly. Jenny looked more and more suspiciously, at Julie’s belly, and then her face. Then said “And... you want to get married now, but have the big wedding later, why...?”

Will could not believe how beautiful and angelic his love looked when she said, “Well, we want to wait to have the big wedding until, um... after the baby comes.”

Helen was beaming at them. Jenny let out a whoop, and said “I knew it!”

Will’s Dad, being slower on the uptake, said “Baby?”

“Dad,” Will said, while Julie pulled the ultrasound screenshots out of her purse and handed them to Jenny, to around, “Julie is pregnant, with our first child. She’s due in early March. We’re getting married soon, just so no one can ever call our little boy a bastard, or anything like that. We’ll still have a church wedding, it’s just that our first kid will be a guest, is all.”

Julie added “We know a lot of people have kids without bothering to get married these days, and I it that Will and I are so deeply committed to each other that we don’t need pieces of paper to tell us what we are to each other. But having kids... we both think it’s the most natural thing to do, to be married when your children are born. It sort of tells the world that yeah, we’re a family, treat us that way. And,” she added, “it avoids so many stupid rules out there. And, um, personally,” she said, blushing slightly because she hadn’t quite itted the full extent of this to Will yet, “I’ve been, like, ‘testing out’ writing and g the name ‘Mrs. Julie Carpenter’ in my diary, off and on, since I was 14. I’d be crushed if I don’t get to do it now, for real.” Will just smiled, since he’d figured out that Julie had a fondness for that part of marrying him. She wanted to take his name.

Jenny seemed more excited about it than Will and Julie were, somehow. “It’s going to be an absolute blast, having a baby around here! Wait, a baby boy? How do you know?”

“You can see his little winkie in the ultrasound, dear,” Helen told her daughter, showing her. “See? Right here.”

Jenny turned back to Julie, in full begging mode, saying “Please, please, PLEASE let me watch him for you when you guys want to go out, please?”

Julie looked at her soon-to-be stepsister-in-law with real affection, and said “Offer of free babysitting duly noted. You’re not allowed to take it back, either!” she laughed.

Julie went on to explain how she had been blessed with a first trimester with no morning sickness, or anything worse than a little fatigue, to give her a clue that she was expecting. And how, with her irregular periods, she hadn’t actually believed it until a couple of weeks before, when she noticed a bump in her tummy, and didn’t think it was because she was getting fat. “I’m so happy Will isn’t the partying type, and I’m not much for it, myself. And since I was spending most of my time with Will, we just didn’t happen to do a lot of things that I should have been avoiding anyway, without realizing it was a good idea,” she said with a happy sigh.

She then spoke from her heart, to her family, saying “Thank you all. I have to say, it’s a little scary, facing my first pregnancy. You guys—and especially this guy,” she said holding Will’s hand up to her own heart, “are the best system any first-time Mom could hope to have. And of course, my folks are only 10 minutes away, and I’m sure we’ll have them over, and vice-versa, a lot, too. I’m just so lucky to have you all.“

Will’s Dad just said “Of course we’re here for you two. That’s my first grandson you’ve got in the oven, there, after all. By the way, Helen, do we have a frame we can put this ultrasound picture in?”

After dinner, Will and Julie were washing the dishes, when Jenny came in to chat.

“So, guys,” Jenny said. “You’re due in early March, you said?”

“The obstetrician report estimates March 5th as the due date, yep,” Julie confirmed. She gave Will a glance and a smile. Their non-verbal communication, which was getting startlingly good, was clear—“She knows.”

“You, ah, know how that math works out, right?” Jenny said.

“Like I told Jules, here, that’s not certain,” Will objected, knowing exactly what Jenny was saying. “We had been sleeping together for about two weeks, when she felt that she might be missing her period, and since her periods aren’t all that regular, and she didn’t get any morning sickness, well, there was no way to really tell. And due dates are estimates, there can be a lot of variation.”

Jenny looked Julie, who looked back at her, and they both burst out laughing.

“Face it, bro,” Jenny said. “That day we came home, and the two of you had been Doin’ It all day? That’s when it happened. You know it, I know it, and certainly Mama Julie, here, knows it.” Julie looks so beautiful when she blushes, Will thought. “Why not just relax and it that my super stud bro finally got with the love of his life, found out she loved him back, and immediately knocked her up? It’s a love story for the ages, guys.”

Will and Julie looked at each other, smiled a secret smile, kissed, and Will said “Thanks, sis. And you know, every great love story should have a happy ending!” Then Will kissed the mother of his child again.