Dashing Devil Omnibus 1: Books 1-3, page 94
He was a little embarrassed, but couldn’t identify why, in particular.
“You learned relationships from me. I set the standard you’ve been holding them to ever since. We took things slow and spent a lot of time together before any real intimacy started. You think I will judge you because things moved faster physically with Raev?”
She chuckled. “I won’t. You think Silvie was able to find her on her own? I knew you two would hit it off like an open flame and explosive gas. Of course, that was supposed to be after you and I worked on some of the underlying issues you have with your Power.”
That was the advantage of a telepathic girlfriend, Boyd thought. It really cut down on the time spent on verbal communication. He didn’t have to waste any time trying to express his thoughts properly.
“Oh? Girlfriend already, am I?” She arched a thin dark eyebrow dramatically at him and quirked her lips.
Which, in addition to ‘are my thoughts too horny’ insecurities, was a disadvantage to having a telepathic girlfriend. Wandering thoughts getting you into trouble should only be a thing if you were dumb enough to voice them. Boyd didn’t let her win this round, though. He just smirked back at her, putting a challenge in his eyes. She knew why she was here.
Her smile blossomed, wide and bright white against her darkly painted lips. “You still are a little shit, aren't you?”
Feeling confident, Boyd leaned in to steal a kiss.
“Woah there…” She pulled back and he didn’t pursue. Instead, he leaned back and blinked at her, taken aback. He had assumed…
“That’s just it,” she shook her head, “you haven't thought this through. You’re running on something of a high, after the relief at discovering you never hurt me. That was messing with your self-perception—a lot. You even worried that Silvie’s love was only something like Stockholm Syndrome. It’s not, by the way. You don’t remember any of the times she went through withdrawals and the effect faded, but she was checked thoroughly just like the others.”
Had he once thought Silvie’s love could be completely artificial? He supposed he had.
“Yes, part of you was convinced the implanted memory of me was the only one who’d been honest with you.” She pursed her lips. “You believed my Power somehow spared me the full effect, and let me break free to express my true thoughts… that Silvie and the other’s felt violated but were unable to be honest because of the effect of your Enhancement or something.”
She pursed her lips, brows drawing together. “It was all just silly insecurities caused by that very false memory. Silvie has always loved you.”
She smoothed her expression. “Anyways, you're not emotionally stable right now. Changing such a core belief about yourself will have adverse effects on your behavior and thinking. You shouldn’t be making decisions about who to kiss at the moment, although hugging is okay. Friends hug, they even cuddle sometimes.”
Boyd didn’t think friends hugged like this, which made her smirk at him again. She’d molded herself to him and felt just as soft as he remembered. He did wonder how long it had been, though. He sensed curiosity and anticipation on his Bond with Silvie, but Raev’s curiosity was starting to shift into concern for him.
“It has been several hours, uh…” Mindy glanced around the room for a clock that was not there, “at least three, maybe four hours.”
Boyd regretted remembering so little of it, which made Mindy stiffen in his arms. Her brow knit with worry before it became that clear she’d made a decision, which showed in her eyes.
“I suppose… just one kiss won’t hurt.”
With that, she leaned up and oh so gently pressed her lips to his. It was more of a gentle brushing of lips than a real kiss. But while it was chaste, it lasted, lingering long enough for her to restore his memory of their first reunion—at least up to the point where she’d started the in-depth memory replacement.
His massage took most of the time. He could tell that was mostly because she had enjoyed being able to pamper him again. Like Boyd, she gained almost as much as the person she was pampering from the experience. Relaxing him relaxed her, in turn.
When she broke the kiss, she leaned her forehead against his chin. His nose nestled into the part in her hair along the centerline of her head. She never did like bangs.
“I don’t want to be like them. I shouldn’t have asked you simply to forget just so we could have a better reunion,” she murmured.
Boyd smiled. It hadn’t been a big deal in this case, but he appreciated the thought behind her words. “It was my idea and more than worth it. I like it. This way, we get both.” He let out a laugh prompted by a stray thought.
“Kuh-heh.” She let out his favorite little laugh. It preceded her mimicking Silvie mimicking him: “ ‘I should face this alone.’ So dramatic.”
She softened her words with another eyeroll and then a smirk. “Okay, I suppose we should go introduce me to the rest of the team. Raev’s going to come looking soon if we don’t. Tinker is convinced this was all some sort of trap. She thinks I’m turning you into a mind-controlled puppet and is preparing to fight for your freedom.”
Mindy tilted her head to the side. “She’s adorable by the way. Thinks way too fast, but adorable.”
Boyd blinked. “Wait… what? She's getting ready to fight?”
“Yes.” Mindy shook her head ruefully. “She’s in her lab desperately assembling something that will restrain you without hurting you. She can’t figure out what to do about Silvie, though, and thinks Raev will come down on her side. She has a pulse weapon that will put a pretty big hole in me, so… you go first.”
“I don’t think she means anything by it.” Boyd felt the need to defend Tinker. It would be easy to take offense at someone preparing to kill you with a pulse weapon, and he didn’t want Mindy to get the wrong idea about her.
“Oh, I know,” Mindy assured him. “It’s mostly because of the impression Silvie has left her with. Which is pretty fair if we are being honest. She thinks you need to be protected from Silvie’s wiles… and I’m associated with Silvie. According to how she perceives all this, we came out here last night and then lured you to a secret base where Silvie whisked you away to meet me. Now, you’ve been gone for hours and Silvie was evasive when Tinker asked when you might come back.”
Boyd frowned.
“She knows I have Mind Powers,” Mindy continued. “From her perspective, that's a lot of red flags. She thinks you need to be saved and she wants to be your Hero.”
Boyd blinked.
“You’re right, I’ve probably said too much. She wouldn’t want you to know she thinks that way. It’s pretty sweet, though, isn’t it?”
Boyd thought it was sweet, but also a bit worrisome given that Tinker was smart enough that she might hurt one of the women close to him because of a misunderstanding. Worrisome, but sweet.
Being raised outside of a PAC gave Tinker a very different perspective, it seemed. She also lacked Boyd’s insight into Silvie’s thoughts and emotions. She’d simply observed Silvie acting against Boyd’s stated interests and had come to her own conclusions from there. She missed the part where Silvie was certain she was acting in his best interests—as she perceived them.
Boyd could sense Silvie’s absolute confidence in that fact.
Boyd had stated that he’d wanted a monogamous relationship with Silvie, but that was only because his Power had modified her mind so that she would permanently love him—no matter what he did. Doing right by her and being the best partner he could be was only right. He would have preferred that she was free of him, able to be a Hero without being attached to a Changed like him.
Mindy scowled at him but didn’t say anything, so he continued his thought process.
Silvie was confident he should have many more lovers, that he should Enhance. He was afraid to ask how many women she wanted to form a massive team around him with. Boyd blinked as the revulsion he expected at the idea, one that typically followed such thoughts, simply… didn’t. He no longer feared inflicting something unpleasant on his partners when his Power activated.
At least he still had issues with stripping the free will of a Hero simply to Enhance someone.
“We’ll track the source of that belief together, once you acclimate to your new memories and the way they change your preconceptions... that’s for later, though. Tinker actually already had something ready for Silvie and was shielding it from her mind so I wouldn’t pick it up. She actually has a really solid mental defense. She’s getting ready to make her move.”
“I’ll go talk to her,” Boyd stated the thought out loud, though he knew Mindy had already read it.
“Yes.” Mindy agreed. “The fact that I won’t be Enhanced when we walk out of here should help. She’d decided to blast me and capture you if you’d Enhanced me already, no matter what anybody said. That would be a sign you’d definitely been turned into a puppet.”
“Yeah… let’s go de-escalate that situation.” Boyd reluctantly stepped back before he thought to remind her, “My promise stands.”
He was speaking of the promise about her being welcome to touch him and enter his mind at any time. There were only a few of them out here, but sometimes she had trouble blocking out even a single person.
She smiled, holding onto the collar of Boyd’s button down to halt his retreat. The Tinker situation must not be urgent enough to end the conversation. “I’ll take you up on that if I need to. The people Davis put on guard duty are keeping their distance, but Tinker does think awfully quickly. Daisy has a lot of anger. Silvie is a Darling, but also a little… uh… never mind about Silvie. I can’t be sure without a full dive into her mind, but Raev seems like she might be almost as comfy as you.”
Mindy’s smile turned into a smirk. “From what I gleaned from you and Silvie, she’ll be down for some cuddles. That would be nice. Think she’ll have a problem with me lounging around in her head?”
Boyd considered her question. Mindy would let him know if there was any real urgency in the Tinker situation. He replied verbally out of habit, and she let him because she was polite.
“Probably not. I don’t think she filters herself all that much—a little bit, but not a whole lot. She was having some issues with rejection, but those seemed to be better this morning. I’m guessing something could set that off again. It’s not something that disappears overnight. Speaking of issues... Silvie was a little off. Is there anything I should know about?”
Mindy nodded. “Yes, but we’ll get to that shortly. Tinker is almost ready.”
“Do you need help walking in those?” He waved down at her platform shoes as he turned.
“Still a little shi-iit,” she added a sing-song tone to her breathy voice. “I’m fine, thank you. They just take a little practice. I can even run in them, as long as it’s in a mostly straight line. Besides, they are perfect. I almost went a little higher, but I’m glad I didn’t. I like how you fold down over me just a little, not too much. Just right.”
She shoved him back a step, “But not if you're going to be a little shit.”
Boyd chuckled and shook his head as he walked to the door. He was starting to get a little anxious about the Tinker situation and wanted to address it. Part of him regretted not listening to the urge to create the intimacy required to form the initial Bond with her when it had cropped up the night before, but he’d ignored it.
At the same time, he wasn’t quite ready to be separated from Mindy, so his tail reached out and coiled around her wrist. She didn’t complain and wrapped her fingers around the part that passed near her hand. He checked his Bonds again, wondering what—if anything—Mindy picked up from them.
“Nothing,” she answered his thought. “I can sense your thoughts related to them, but I sense nothing of Silvie or Raev through your mind unless you think it. Of course, they are close enough that I can hear them anyway. I’m a little curious to see it in action—their thoughts and how you react to them.”
Boyd grunted. Both Silvie and Raev were much the same as when he’d last checked in with them. It didn’t take long to leave the hall and enter the Great Room where Silvie was watching for them, sitting at a table in the middle tier that had good line of sight with this hallway. Raev was with her at the table, also facing the hall, but Silvie closed the distance between them in a blur.
She came to a stop, floating in front of them at eye level.
She wore a big, open smile, looking rather pleased with herself as her bright eyes tracked to where his tail remained coiled around Mindy’s hand and forearm.
“It went well!” It isn’t a question, but a cheer.
“Better than I thought it would,” Mindy replied, smiling but pulling her hand from his tail.
Boyd still wasn’t quite ready to let her go, but he did.
“Tinker is on her way, and… oh my. She has something that just blocked me out,” Mindy said with some concern in her voice.
“Which hall leads to her lab?” Boyd asked, starting to move towards the opposite hallway.
“Ahh, the far-left hallway from this one. What’s happening?” Silvie had picked up on there being something wrong.
“She thinks Mindy is turning me into a puppet and intends to fight you all to free me. I’ll handle it, stay with Mindy please,” Boyd requested.
Tinker wasn’t actually a danger to anyone, but a pulse weapon wouldn’t hurt him all that badly and wouldn’t even scratch Silvie. It was best to keep them between her and the much softer Mindy. He reached the hall and saw Tinker walking down it.
She looked more frightened than actually ready for a fight, but she determinedly put one foot in front of the other. To be fair, she thought she was about to face an A-Ranked and an S-Ranked Hero with what she could put together in only a few hours.
It took guts to make it even this far.
“Hey there, Tinker,” Boyd said calmly.
She was wearing the skin-tight shiny pink jumpsuit with the darker pink tactical rig he recognized from the night they’d met. The rig was big and bulky, covering most of her in various tools and gadgets which he barely recognized the general functions of. It explained how he’d missed the rather pleasant little body all that gear had hidden from him when they’d first met.
She’d even suited up to try and save him. He might just be in a good mood from having the weight of implanted false memories lifted from him, but Tinker’s intent to murder Mindy and save him from her clutches charmed him. It was probably because she was so overmatched, knew it, and was willing to try it anyway.
From her perspective, this was her Omega Ray.
“Oh!” She nearly jumped out of her suit when he came around the corner and spoke. She was still about twenty feet down the long hallway, but still backpedaled a couple of steps and almost fell, barely catching herself. She scrambled for and pulled a large metal canister with a handle from her rigging and aimed it at him.
It was not a pulse weapon he recognized, so he assumed it was a non-lethal she’d designed just for him—which was also charming, in its own way.
“Woah!” He held up his hands and dropped to his butt with a thump, sticking his legs out straight. His tail helped guide the motion and kept him from toppling onto his back. His wings slid out in front of him to either side, following their natural bend.
“I appreciate you taking the time to make that, but please don’t use it,” he called to her.
“B-Boyd?” she asked with a shaky voice, holding the large canister-looking device aimed at him.
“Yup. Just me. Mind control free,” he promised.
“Then how do you know I think you’ve been taken over?” Tinker glared at him from down the hall, settling the weapon on him more solidly instead of lowering it.
“Good question,” Boyd nodded. “The Mind Powered was in your head until just a moment ago. Whatever you are using to block her out is working now, but it wasn’t before. She told me what you were thinking before we came out of her room.”
It took a second for his brain to catch up with his mouth. “Which doesn’t mean I Enhanced her,” he quickly added, “because I didn’t. Nobody has been turned into a mind-puppet. Thank you for worrying about me, though. I mean it.”
Tinker just continued to glare at him, unconvinced.
He didn’t blame her. “She’s my ex from back at our PAC,” Boyd continued. The only thing for it would be to keep feeding her the truth until she accepted it. “I’m sorry I was gone so long. We were catching up and she did do something in my head that took some time.”
Tinker flinched, which he’d expected she would do. He was just glad she didn’t accidentally set off the weapon.
“Hmm. Yeah, not sounding great, I know,” Boyd agreed. “She removed a false memory placed by The Authority. In it, they had a fake her tell me that our… first experience together, and my Enhancement of her, was terrible for her.” He grimaced, even the memory of having had the false memory stirred his rage. “It was a violation. Pretty much the same as rape.”
The last words came out as a low growl. It was only after the words were said that he realized that information was likely subject to confidentiality rules, and he should not have told her. He couldn’t find it in himself to regret it; the anger made it easy to dismiss.
‘Please be careful. You are not yourself and may regret your actions later. If I had known this would happen, I would have waited until after I at least introduced myself to her,’ Mindy’s voice floated through his mind.
‘It’s fine, I’ll be careful.’ Boyd thought back before continuing out loud. “So, she removed that terrible false memory and gave me a better fake in its place.”
“Why place a new false memory if she wasn’t trying to control you? Do you remember everything? What year is it? When did we meet? What did you have for lunch the day you came to my room? What’s the first thing I made for you?” Tinker shot off the questions rapid-fire, but Boyd did his best to keep up.
“Right.” He nodded when she stopped at the sixth question. “She replaced the false memory of our last meeting with a better, more realistic one where we promised to meet again one day after she’d been sent to a different center. I am aware of a gap in my memory that was restored and the reason behind it but cannot be sure there are not more. The year is 1014. We met the night your team was attacked by Blast-Front. Lunch when I came to your room was… Chinese food, a bunch of stuff from the food court. The first thing you made me was the dagger I used to kill Omega Ray… I think. It’s the first thing you gave me, at least. Does the ship count?”
