Her Secret Desire

For the first part of the day, things went as normal. Jean attended her classes, did her level best to exceed all expectations. The lesson s were not hard for her. She'd already covered most of them on her own, and she enjoyed showing it off as well. When the teachers would call for a volunteer, she would often be the first in line. She loved showing off how much she knew because it vindicated the suffering she'd went to to learn it. Jean lived for the moment she could answer a question that no one else could, or solve a riddle which had stumped the entire class. That moment in the spotlight as the professor or teacher applauded her efforts made her day.

But it didn't do much to endear her to the rest of the class. Jean was well aware that many of the others thought she hogged the spotlight, or that she was a teacher's pet who adored the attention more than anything else. It wasn't her fault that they simply didn't work as hard as she did, if they had, perhaps they would have been able to compete with her! But since they hadn't, they had no right to complain when she showed them all up.

That was how she tended to think, anyway. But she would be lying if she said there wasn't some tiny part of herself that enjoyed their angry looks or sideways glares. Maybe that was the root of all this. The feeling of attention, both positive and negative. It was what she lived for. On some level, she knew that it was unhealthy but her whole life had been unhealthy in a way. All she could do was embrace it, and enjoy it. Of course, by no means was she an outcast to the whole of the class. There were plenty of people who liked her, and she even had a few friends. But there was one particular detractor who had always caught her eye.

His name was James Standfort. A dark haired guy with a rugged face and grey eyes. He was a smart student, though not quite as smart as she was. This had tended to mean he got answers to the questions a half second later than she did, and as a result, had to sit and watch as she was applauded for her work again and again. It was not something that he enjoyed doing, and often the more intense glare directed at her came from him. He was a nasty piece of work, a bully through and through who enjoyed having power over other people.

Jean's dark secret was that she had a crush on him. Ever since their rivalry had begun, she'd noticed how handsome he was, and also how vicious. His dry tones were mocking, and his eyes were ruthless and cold. He wasn't the sort of person you wanted for a boyfriend, but her fantasies typically didn't really care about that. When she thought of him, it wasn't because she was imagining being in a relationship. Or at least, not that sort of relationship.

She'd realised a few weeks ago that what she really wanted to do was to lose her power to him. She wanted to be made helpless by him, defeated and cast down. It had been a weird feeling, and it came with a whole wave of shame. She, who had worked so hard for her power and for her control now wanted to lose it? At first it seemed like utter madness to her, but the thought didn't leave her kind. Jean struggled with it, even found herself touching her body with it haunting her. Trailing fingers along her chest, or rubbing her pussy and imagining that he was watching her do it. The thought made her breathless and left her wanting. Sometimes, when she was in her room alone at night watching porn, she would imagine that it was starring James and herself. As it had gone on, she'd started to sink into more and more specific niches of porn, turning to fantasies of being bullied by him. Jean had always treasured her power, the control she had managed to gather over the course of her life. The idea of it being taken away by someone else horrified her.

_And yet, _spoke an insidious part of her mind, she wouldn't have to worry about being the best anymore. She wouldn't have to worry about succeeding flawlessly in everything she did. She would simply have to do what she was told and accept the fact that she was lesser in his eyes.

Jean hated that part of herself. She hated it because it sometimes sounded like her father, but even as she hated it, it spoke to an inner part of her. The idea made her wet even if she tried to pretend otherwise and after so many weeks of ignoring it, it just seemed to get louder and louder. At night, sometimes she would dream of what might happen if she submitted to James, and the dreams had been horrified and yet aroused her in equal measure. She knew that doing something like that could throw off her life, she knew that giving him power over her was something that she should never do. If she did, he'd never let it go. He wasn't nice. He wasn't good. He didn't care about her as anything other than a rival or a pretty face.

But that very disregard made her so very horny at the thought of falling into his hands.

When she had found the ring, everything had changed. Just like her brother, the first time she had touched it, Jean had been told about what it could do. She'd been told by the ring itself, it had simply inserted the information into her mind, slotted it in like it had always been there.

Because you see, the power of the ring _was _minds. To play with them, to manipulate them. To change them. The kind of thing she could do with powers like that had burned inside of her all last night. She'd tossed and turned in bed, the blankets twisting around her legs. She thought so hard about it that it had intruded into her dreams. When she woke the next morning, her pussy was wet with half remembered feelings and phantom fingers. It had been so obvious that even Stewart had realised what sort of thing she was planning to do and tried to warn her off.

She shook her head. As if she would ever let him dissuade her. She didn't hate him. Really, she didn't. But he was the lazy one, the one who got to coast through life while she had to work, work, work. To say that she had some issues there would be to understate it. She had subscriptions.

With the ring on her finger, she could pick the surface thoughts out of anyone in the class. She choose James. He was sitting on the other side of the room, looking bored. When his eyes strayed towards her, she felt flashes of arousal. Desire. She knew he wanted her body. One didn't need a mind-reading ring to realise _that _from the way he sometimes looked at her when he thought she wasn't aware of him! But he also felt anger whenever she was called to give an answer. Frustration at his own slowness, annoyance that even the teachers recognised her as the superior student. He wanted nothing more than to take her down a peg.

Jean tried not to think of how that made her knees go weak. This was never something she would do in the normal course of things. But things weren't normal now, and with the ring she could have her cake and eat it to, so to speak. All she had to do was to get close enough to touch him. Even a simple brush would be enough. With the ring on her finger, she knew how it worked. She could read his intentions with a simple act of will, but only surface thoughts. If she wanted to change anything, she had to get closer.

That was why, when the class ended, Jean accidentally brushed against him. Her hand touching the side of his chest. In an instant, she felt the world shift. The ring sparked to life, and Jame's mind was laid out before her. She saw it all, though _how _she saw it all, she would have a hard time describing. It was laid out before her, a network of connections, thoughts, feelings and swirling patterns. The world around her had slowed to a stop, the air was tinged with a deep grey. Time had paused to give her enough thinking room to do what she had come to do.

Unlike her brother, Jean wasn't overly bothered by the morality of her actions. At least, not by as much. She reasoned that James wanted to do it anyway, and she would be able to keep anyone else from being involved or hurt, so where was the harm?

She reached into his mind, and made a few changes. It wasn't hard, the ring showed her what to do. Damp down some things, intensify others. It was a balance, there was no singular thing to alter but instead, she had to change the mixture.

It took her about ten minutes of subjective time, but when she broke contact with his body, no time had passed on the outside world at all. She watched carefully, in case there was some obvious sign but nothing happened. James' face didn't even change as he brushed her off and moved down the corridor. She watched him go, her heart beating fast.

Had it worked?

She was going to see...