“...so you see, the infusion of thistledown binds with the feverwort to first reverse and then limit the—”

Despite the circumstances, Alexa found herself soothed by the familiar rhythm as Estie’s virtuosic explanation rolled over her. She remembered a late night crammed together at her dorm room’s tiny desk, listening to her study partner explain the thaumaturgical properties of edible herbs. She’d called the other student on the verge of tears after her last class that day, panicking about the practical exam next morning. Dutiful Estie had arrived twenty minutes later with a thermos of tea and a pep talk, and had stayed with her past midnight until she had a firm grasp on the material. And how have I repaid her?

She’d managed a B- on that test. It probably could have been a B+ if she hadn’t kept getting distracted by the warmth of the girl beside her and the soothing rhythm of her voice. Just like she was getting distracted now.

Alexa snapped herself out of her reverie—they had work to do. She summoned her willpower and interrupted.“This isn’t a tutoring session anymore! We need to brew the potion, not talk about it.”

Alexa thought she caught a hint of an eyeroll as Estie sighed. “All right, all right. Here’s what we need. It should all be in the storage closet. Grab it while I get the base started.”

Alexa took a moment to admire the neat handwriting in the notebook Estie handed her before walking to the supply closet. She easily found feverwort, silvergrass, and thistledown in the neatly alphabetical shelves of plant components. The magical reagent bin was a bit more haphazard; she had to lift a jar of jellied baby laughs off a sheaf of snoozepaper, but after a bit of rummaging, she managed to find a vial of powdered ice.

The animal components were organized first by type, then by species. Eyes (beetle) were easy to find, right at the front of the drawer. Dander (leopard) had Alexa murmuring the alphabet song under her breath as she marched through badger, fox, hare, and kaibyou. Silk (spider) was only one of a few vials in its drawer. But when she looked for cud (camel), it wasn’t between cud (bison) and cud (cow). Anxiety sparked again in Alexa’s heart as she scooped up the rest of the materials in a precarious armful and somehow managed to haul them back to the bench without dropping anything.

Estie had already prepared the base, the clear spirits shimmering palely with magical enrichment. “Got everything?”

“Well, yeah, um, mostly. They don’t have camel cud? I think?” Alexa felt a hot blush rise into her cheeks. She’d let her classmate down again. “There are a bunch of other, uh, cuds. Can we use bison instead? Or antelope?”

“Hmm. Not if we want this to stick. I know we haven’t gotten to the symbology of animal components yet, but I’ve done some reading on it and with the evolving effects of your potion, we’ll need the constancy represented by the camel’s—”

“Estie!” Alexa cut her off, grabbing her by the shoulders. “This isn’t the time for a tutoring lesson! You need to focus on the counterdraught!”

Estie’s eyes lost focus briefly at Alexa’s touch. She murmured “yes…” before snapping back to her usual focused self. “Yes. Right. Long story short: we need camel’s cud or this won’t take. Not too surprising it’s not here; cow is usually sufficient for anything you’d want to do in school. You just had to go and make an industrial-strength aphrodisiac.”

Despair and shame gripped Alexa’s heart, and Estie must have seen it reach her face.

“Oh stop beating yourself up.” She put one hand on Alexa’s cheek. “You just… you…” She trailed off, her eyes unfocusing again as a gentle smile began to play at the edge of her lips. Her thumb began stroking Alexa’s cheekbone.

Alexa grabbed the hand in both of hers and held it to her chest. “Estie, please!”

Estie just let out a little “oooh” and flattened her palm against Alexa’s chest, still bare since it had become abundantly clear that trying to stay clothed was a fool’s errand. Against her best judgment, Alexa’s cunt pulsed. She allowed Estie’s hand to remain where it was and grabbed her shoulders again, eliciting an “mmmm” as a big dopey grin spread across her study partner’s face.

“Estie, can you understand me?”

“Mmmmm hmm…”

She started stroking her hand along Estie’s arm, hoping she could cajole her back into focus like she had before.

“Will you do what I say?”

“Yessssss…”

Alexa clenched her thighs together and bit back a noise of her own. She’d had this exact fantasy. But she had to do the right thing.

“I need you to focus on the potion. Where can we get the last ingredient?”

Estie’s brow furrowed and her grin melted away, but her eyes were still staring into the distance.

“I don’t… I…” she muttered, trailing off into whimpers.

Alexa pulled her into an embrace and began stroking her back. “It’s okay. It’s okay. I guess this is my fault too.”

Suddenly the grin was back as Estie rubbed her cheek against Alexa’s soft chest and let out another happy “ooooooh”. Like a cat, she arched her back into every stroke, greedy for Alexa’s touch. Alexa, in turn, felt hotter and hotter as she saw how enthralled Estie had become.

“Estie…”

Her voice was getting husky as she fought to keep herself from taking advantage of her study partner. Haven’t I already done enough damage? Shouldn’t I focus on fixing the problem I’ve created?

Estie gazed up at her, eyes wide and questioning, her mind all fuzz, awaiting Alexa’s words.

Then again… I’m no use on my own. And there’s only one way to get Estie to focus. So why not have a little fun with it?

“...kneel.”

Estie released her embrace and fell to her knees immediately, still gazing upwards, happy to have an order she knew how to follow. Alexa felt another jolt of pleasure shoot up between her legs. “Open your mouth.”

Estie just kept staring happily, clearly still entranced but not moving a muscle. Something was missing.

Following a hunch, Alexa put a hand on her head. A shudder of pleasure ran through her body, confirming Alexa’s suspicions.

“Open. Your. Mouth.”

Estie’s mouth immediately dropped open. Alexa removed the hand from her head and placed two fingers gently on her tongue. She let out an almost reverent “ahhhh” around them.

“Suck.”

Estie sucked on Alexa’s fingers as though they were the most delicious things she’d ever tasted. She didn’t need to be told to run her tongue along her friend’s digits, and as a reward Alexa moved her fingers, caressing each of her lab partner’s cheeks in turn.

Alexa watched Estie grind her thighs together in desire as she sucked, and she couldn’t resist reveling in it. “You really want me, huh?”

Estie replied with an emphatically positive noise around the fingers in her mouth.

“All right then,” Alexa said, “eat me out.” She removed her fingers so she could brace her hips against the lab bench and set her legs wide.

Alexa just had time to see a grin break out across Estie’s face before she leaned forward and got to work. Despite her state of mind, she showed a remarkable amount of restraint, teasing Alexa by licking first her inner thighs and then her outer labia. But when Alexa let out a long, needy moan and bunched Estie’s hair in her hands, she couldn’t resist the implied command. She ran her tongue directly up her friend’s slit, luxuriating in the flavor of her arousal, her gasp of pleasure, and her hand radiating bliss and control down Estie’s body.

After a few more long, lazy licks, Estie dove deeper. As a child, she’d won schoolyard bets by being able to touch her nose with her tongue; today she used its length to more pleasurable ends, driving deep into Alexa’s pussy, causing her to buck her hips and grind her vulva into Estie’s eager face. She drew her tongue back, licking in a circle as she went, and then thrust in again and again.

“Ah! Ahh!” grunted Alexa, trying to keep her voice down as she was being soundly tongue-fucked. She wasn’t sure when her hand had crept up and started massaging her breast and pulling at her nipple. This was even better than her fantasies. She tried to fix this moment in her memory: Estie kneeling before her, naked, face buried between her spread legs, eyes unfocused, lost in the sheer obedient adoration—and in Alexa’s juices.

But getting me off doesn’t solve anything.

“Estie,” she said between thrusts of her lab partner’s tongue, “touch yourself.”

Estie’s hand flew to her cunt as if all she’d been waiting for was Alexa’s permission.

Alexa couldn’t see Estie’s fingers at work, but she could feel her lab partner’s moans into her own dripping pussy and she could see her body begin to undulate in time with her strokes. Her tongue moved now to Alexa’s clit, circling it in time with the heaving of her shoulders. Alexa gasped every time she brushed it, and every time Estie heard that gasp she sent her fingers deeper inside her.

For a long luxurious moment, this continued. Estie ran her fingers along her slit and plunged them inside as she delicately kept her friend just on the edge of climax. Whatever the potion had drained of her ability to focus on practical matters had evidently ended up flowing into her sexual skill.

But it wasn’t Alexa who gave in first: before long, Estie’s movements become more rapid, more intense, and as soon as Alexa saw her eyes roll back she couldn’t hold it any more. She came all over Estie’s face, fluid running down her chin. Estie’s back arched simultaneously, her orgasmic scream dampened by Alexa’s soft sex.

For a solid minute after, they each held their positions: Estie kneeling on the floor, her hands now limp on her lap; Alexa, propped up on the bench by her elbows, barely standing. They panted, allowing the aftershocks to roll over them in waves.

“Well,” Estie said, finally breaking the silence, “We’d better get back to work. Wouldn’t want that to happen again.”

She shot Alexa an enigmatic wink as she rolled into a squat and then pushed herself upwards. “Sorry, my head’s still a bit fuzzy. I remember you couldn’t find something…”

“You can stop pretending!” Alexa had meant to say this calmly, but it escaped her mouth as an angry accusation. And now that it was out, there was no stemming the flood. “You can stop acting like you’re okay with this!”

“Alexa..?”

“Obviously you hate me. Obviously you don’t want to be around me any more. I’m not stupid!”

“Alexa…”

“I know I was just your pity case from section 6B! Poor Alexa, can’t brew a philter to save her life, better be a good citizen and help her out. And now I’ve fucked that up too, now I’m just that crazy bitch who drugged you to get into your-”

“Crone’s cunt! Alexa! Shut up!”

Alexa gave her a sullen look, but she did indeed stop talking.

“You actually are quite stupid sometimes, you know that? You think I have time to help just anyone who needs it? You think I’m that nice? Jennix Mudwater can’t tell a toad from a toadstool, but you don’t see them at our tutoring sessions. Chastity Stoke failed every exam and I don’t spend my afternoons running through the lessons with her.”

“Then I’m sorry you picked the wrong failure.”

Estie let out a huge sigh, gazing at Alexa with a look that began as frustration but slowly unfolded into horrified realization. “You really don’t get it, do you?”

Alexa avoided her gaze.

“The first day we met, I spent fifteen minutes rubbing lotion all up and down your arms. You remember that, right?”

Alexa nodded.

“Do you really think I would have done that for anyone else?”

Alexa blushed deep crimson as panic shot into her heart. She couldn’t possibly mean-

“Are you telling me I’ve been flirting with you all semester and you didn’t even realize?”

Alexa began stammering, “I-I- But, you, I-”

“Every time I brought you a dragonpear fritter from your favorite café?” Estie was fully ranting now. “That time I walked with you six miles off campus because you left your backpack in a bar in Reaver’s Row? All those late nights at my dorm when I cooked you dinner?”

“I-I-I thought you were being nice!”

“Alexa.” Estie waited until her friend locked eyes with her. “No one is that nice. I was trying to fuck you.” She threw her hands into the air. “And I was getting nowhere! You never flirted back, you never touched me, you were never anything but polite. Polite and endlessly apologetic. As though it somehow bothered me to go over my notes with the hottest girl in class.”

“B-but I’m not—” Alexa began before being stopped by the sheer force of Estie’s withering gaze.

“I had just about given up when finally you made a move. Slipping me a glowing coffee that smelled like mermaids wasn’t too subtle, but hey, I’d certainly made my interest obvious.”

Estie stared pointedly at her friend, who began sputtering, “I, y-you, but… you knew?”

“Well, I didn’t know it was going to try to kill me. I figured worst case I’d sprout a cock or something.”

Alexa was aghast. “B-b-but you knew… it was…”

“...an aphrodisiac? Yeah, babe, I used to take these for fun in high school.”

Alexa’s blush turned a shade deeper. “A-and, and you still..?”

Estie shrugged. “I just figured you must like it a bit kinky.”

“No!” Alexa looked horrified. “I-I-I don’t, I’m not like that!”

Estie raised one eyebrow in utmost skepticism. Alexa desperately tried to look anywhere else while muttering, “I didn’t, I just, I g-guess… I don’t know what came over me.”

“Hey.” Estie grabbed her hand and met her gaze. “You’ve got to get out of your own head. You’re a domme! And you’re good at it! And I like you! These are good things.”

“Okay. I’m sorry. Okay.” Alexa took a breath, trying to calm herself down with only some success. “I, um, I… I like you too.”

“Yeah, message received,” Estie replied dryly. “So enough with this ‘woe is me I’ve forced poor Estie to fuck my brains out’ melodrama, all right? I know an aphrodisiac when I taste one and I’m not so innocent as all that.”

“Okay…” Alexa tried as hard as she could to digest all this information. “But… we still need to keep you alive.”

“Right. Remind me what we need?”

“Camel’s cud?”

“Ah, maiden’s tits. I think I know where we can get some. But it won’t be easy.”