Most people wouldn't describe trance as something you could win at. But Jazmin was determined to prove them all wrong. She stared into Tamara's deep blue eyes with the same fierce determination in her gaze that she had when facing down her rival on the basketball court, only turned now toward sinking faster and dropping deeper and proving to Ms Corbin that she was the superior hypnotic subject. She could hear the older white woman's voice in her ears, murmuring, "See how easy it is to focus and relax, slipping easily and effortlessly into peace and pleasure for me," but it didn't really matter to her. Nothing mattered more than beating Tamara now.

Not that their rivalry was anything other than friendly. They'd known each other practically since kindergarten, practiced in the same scrimmages and bunked together at the same training camps and played against each other in every league from pee-wee to varsity, and they'd discovered along the way a deep and abiding friendship that was far too full of respect for one another's abilities to ever go easy on each other. Jazmin knew she was going to get to the WNBA someday. She knew there was no way Tamara wouldn't be there right along with her. And she knew the more fiercely they competed, they better each of them would be.

And if Coach Bronson thought that seeing a 'sports hypnotist' would help improve their game, it didn't matter that Jazmin secretly thought hypnosis was kind of bullshit and Ms Corbin was just sucking up alumni cash that should probably have gone to renovating the school library. She wasn't going to let some big-titted, middle-aged bottle blonde go back to the coach and tell her that Tamara had done a better job of playing along than Jazmin did. "Just keep looking into each other's eyes, keep sinking deeper and deeper into each other's eyes, and as you do, you'll feel your arms getting lighter and lighter," the older woman said, and Jazmin's brow furrowed with the strength of her intention to go along with the suggestion.

She noticed Tamara's fingers twitching, just out of the corner of her eye--there was no way she was even going to so much as glance away from her friend's unblinking gaze, not when they were locked into a staring contest and looking down meant losing--and she dug deep and tried to remember what the hypnotist had told them at the start of their conversation. 'Hypnosis isn't magic, it's a state of concentration and focus. At first it might feel like you're only pretending to go along with my suggestions, but as you keep doing it, it'll become more and more natural.' Which meant Jazmin could just lift her arm very very slowly, like it was Ms Corbin's voice doing it and not her, and it would still count.

But that sneaky bitch Tamara was playing along too, her flushed and sweaty palms rising up from her knees with a look of puzzlement crossing her face as though she legitimately couldn't believe the hypnotist's tricks were working. Jazmin was sure it was fake, she'd seen Tamara do a similar act on the court after taking a charge and drawing the foul, but she didn't want anyone showing her up. She did her best to pretend that her own hands were being tugged up by imaginary strings attached to hallucinatory balloons, or whatever it was Ms Corbin was whispering in their ears while they sat in opposite chairs staring into each other's eyes. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered but winning.

Even in the game, it was had to stifle that killer instinct when it came to Tamara. She might know intellectually that her friend was wide open right next to the basket, but it always felt so emotionally satisfying to take it hard to the hole and score a quick two-pointer right in front of her oldest rival. And Tamara felt the same way. They both knew it was the bane of Coach Bronson's existence, and she probably sent them to the hypnotist hoping Ms Corbin could brainwash them into working together or something, but a lifetime of competition made for some hard habits to break.

Which meant that yes, as stupid as it sounded, Jazmin did want to be hypnotized better than Tamara. She wanted to be the one to hear that soft cooing voice in her ears, murmuring, "That's it, good girl, you're doing so well and it's so easy to just relax even deeper and let those hands float up, up, up right over your head for me now," and it made her feel downright elated to know that the older woman's praise was directed at her. Even if Tamara no doubt thought the same thing.

She had to admit, it did feel surprisingly easy to let her hands just float there, raised as high as they would go above their head while her arms felt almost as though they were simply dangling limply suspended from her wrists. That... that was impossible, of course, and Jazmin knew it was impossible, but looking at Tamara made it easier to believe it was really happening. Her friend legitimately looked like she was hanging from invisible strings, and Jazmin couldn't help feeling a little bit more convinced once she saw what was happening to her teammate.

She heard Ms Corbin saying, "...relax even deeper once I cut those strings and your arms fall back down," and her brow furrowed even more intently as she tried to remember exactly what the hypnotist had been saying before that, but it was no good. She'd tuned it out a little bit too well. She'd been so focused on... on her arms, on Tamara's deep blue eyes, on keeping her own impossibly heavy eyelids from slamming tight shut--wait. Had that ever been a part of the conversation? Jazmin found to her surprise that it was remarkably easy to forget the details of what the older woman had been saying to them.

But looking at Tamara, it was all too easy to see the suggestion taking root in her friend's distracted brain. The other woman's stare looked glassy and unfocused, and her jaw hung slack as she turned all her attention to keeping her drooping eyelids open. She looked... shit, she looked legitimately hypnotized. She looked like Ms Corbin's patter was really working on her, and while a part of Jazmin was quietly relieved to lose this particular competition she had to admit that Tamara also looked really happy about being in trance. A tiny smile quirked at the corners of her parted lips, and she almost seemed to be squirming in her seat with some half-formed desire to--to--

Even as Jazmin sluggishly considered it, she realized she knew what was making her friend's hips wriggle ever so slightly in her seat. It wasn't something she could put into words, because the words were Ms Corbin's words and they'd already slipped into the back of her head and gotten lost deep down in Jazmin's subconscious, but she could feel the emotion and it felt good. Better than good--it felt delicious, warm and tempting and teasing between Jazmin's taut brown thighs, and she realized it would feel even better when she heard the command she'd been waiting for without even thinking about it. She tried to smile, but it felt too much like work and only the tinest, dreamiest expression of bliss crossed her slack features. A tiny rivulet of saliva trickled from the corner of her mouth, but she couldn't reach down to wipe it away and anyway it didn't matter. She was deeply hypnotized. Which meant maybe she was winning after all.

Then Ms Corbin said, "And cut," and every muscle in Jazmin's body slumped into limp and drowsy immobility. Her hands fell into her lap, her head fell forward onto her chin, and her eyelids gave up whatever ghost of an effort they'd been putting up and slammed tightly shut. Even her brow smoothed out into placid, untroubled euphoria, the weight of confusion in her mind ceasing to matter compared to the lazy bliss of surrender. "That's my good girl," the older woman purred, and Jazmin glowed with quiet contentment at being singled out once again for praise despite being absolutely sure she would have bristled with anger at being patronized to like that just a short while ago.

Her hands begin to drift back up again at Ms Corbin's command, and even though on some level she was aware that they now held the hem of her shirt Jazmin couldn't quite seem to make her hazy and relaxed mind focus on what that might mean. It just felt so good to let them float, so good to stare into the memory of Tamara's eyes even though her eyelids were stuck shut, and so good to do what she was told that she didn't want to question what the hypnotist was telling her to do. She wanted to sink deeper and obey. She wanted to... fuck, she wanted to be a good girl, and she wanted it more than anything. Even winning.

She sank ten times deeper when her hands fell back into her lap, this time holding her shirt, but somehow the boneless lethargy that gripped her body simply evaporated at Ms Corbin's command. It felt like the easiest thing in the world to rise to her feet, shrugging off her shorts and underwear to stand naked in front of her hypnotist, and the coaxing promise of yet more pleasure made her quiver gently in place with every enticing word. The anticipation filled Jazmin's mind more and more completely with every passing moment, only waiting for an instruction to give it shape and form and destiny.

Until she heard the older woman say, "Reach out and embrace," and her hands went around Tamara's bare hips as the two of them closed the distance between them and allowed their bodies to caress each other. They weren't perfectly face to face, and as Jazmin stepped in she found that her thigh pressed against Tamara's slick pussy lips even as Tamara's leg ground against her tingling cunt, and before they knew it both women were rocking back and forth in mindless, urgent lust. The sensation completed something inside Jazmin's brain, some image of her friend and rival and teammate and competitor, and the crush she'd been nursing on Tamara for the better part of a decade finally manifested into full awareness with a thud of obviousness so intense Jazmin couldn't believe she'd ever missed it.

She suddenly wanted to make Tamara cum, wanted it more badly than she'd ever wanted any championship in any of the leagues she played in, and she began to grind furiously against her lover's sopping cunt while Ms Corbin murmured soft and gentle words into their ears that Jazmin resolutely couldn't imagine listening to. All she knew was that she wanted to please Tamara, to make her body shudder and quake in helpless release, and finally the concept of assisting her teammate clicked in a way that it never had before because her own pleasure absolutely depended on the other woman's. They climaxed together or not at all, and the moment Jazmin internalized that she found herself shaking with ecstasy at the notion of fucking Tamara to orgasm.

When it happened, the two of them were so overwhelmed by the potent rapture that they had to cling to each other for support, and they probably would still have collapsed in another few moments if Ms Corbin hadn't been there to guide them first to the floor and then into an enthusiastic sixty-nine. Jazmin found herself consumed with the desire to lick Tamara's pussy, diving between her thighs and tongue-fucking her lover's muff with an excitement and an arousal that channeled years of pent-up excitement. Both of them went hard at each other, urgently driving one another to a second and then a third orgasm before the details faded away and only pleasure mattered.

They woke an hour later according to the clock, the whole thing seeming so thoroughly dreamlike that Jazmin might genuinely have dismissed it as an absent fantasy if not for the taste of Tamara's musky cunt still on her lips. She couldn't quite make herself believe it to be real, though, either, and because her mind continued to drift in that state of passive and hazy acceptance she didn't question anything the hypnotist told them about their time together. It simply calved off from Jazmin's experience of consensus reality and became an isolated little pocket of pleasant abstraction, accepted without thought or concern and left behind in her subconscious when she returned to the everyday world. Only her lessons would remain.

Her lessons... and the strong, certain realization that she wanted to make love to Tamara again.

THE END