Rachel's Love Potion Pt. 06

As Joanna greedily sucked down my cum, shuddering in yet another orgasm for which she'd begged yet never really volunteered, it was hard to believe there had ever been a time when I'd regretted what I'd done to her friend Rachel.

To be clear, that regret -- brief and trivial in proportion though it was -- wasn't out of some sort of pathetic moral stance or anything. To hell with that. There were a dozen lenses through which I could justify what I'd done. Yeah, yeah, turning an innocent -- oh, so innocent -- stranger into my hapless fuck buddy might give some people pause, yet plenty of those same judgmental pricks never batted an eyelash at sending their nation's soldiers to butcher brown people in foreign wars, or over mass incarceration, world hunger. If a man had seduced Rachel with his bank account, nobody would complain, even if they knew deep down she cried after sex. Unless he gave her the money directly; then she's a hooker and we're back to judgment land.

(Of course, I don't really give two shits about justifications. Once you've communed with one of the numerous -- some scholars say innumerable -- hell dimensions, you realize that morality doesn't factor into the grand scheme of much of anything.)

No, I didn't lose sleep over it. What I'd done to her had given her happiness, and much more than that: Purpose.

I don't think people realize how precious a gift that last one is, either. Purpose, that is. What is more elusive, more rewarding, than that sense that one understands the reason for one's existence? Lucky for me, I'm a man of simple tastes, and watching Joanna cough up a mouthful of spunk into her parents' pillows was all the purpose I needed for today. But someone like Rachel? If not for me, she'd have spent her entire youth chasing down the closest approximation she could find of the fairy tale bullshit she guzzled down onThe Bachelorette, only to wake up one day in her fifties with an empty nest, a fat old man she didn't love beside her, and a sallow-eyed stranger looking back at her in the mirror. But now? She woke up in the morning and knew exactly what she wanted to do, and she'd never stop wanting it, nor stop deriving satisfaction from it.

Namely, having fun with her best friend. And hey, many a day, I felt the same way.

"Oh shit, I have to clean that up! My dad is going to kill me if he thinks I brought some guy to his lake cabin and fucked him in his bed!" Joanna exclaimed.

I caught her by the elbow as she scurried toward the bathroom for cleaning supplies. "Leave it, and I'll let you blow me again in a few hours."

She stopped resisting immediately, though still had the grace to look conflicted before sighing in resignation and settling back down beside me. If the pillow or its stain minded the malevolent glare directed at them, they didn't alter course. But neither did the girl glaring.

Ah, Joanna. Here was another thing I could hardly believe I'd ever felt differently about.

Once I had Rachel wrapped around my finger, I'd thought I could never want for anything sexual again. She was so fucking hot. Not in that porn star/bikini model way, either, which had always struck me as rather cheap. No, Rachel was the ultimate girl next door -- albeit down the block and around the corner, technically. The sort of doe-eyed gorgeous-but-believable twenty-something girl they cast as a teen in movies. Not that her body wasn't amazing, too. It was. Oh god, it was. Perky tits, tight little ass, legs for days... And honestly, one of the things that tickled me the most was how goddamnawkward the girl was. She'd clearly never had to seduce a guy in her life. I'd taught her a few things so she didn't embarrass herself, but still, every time she kissed me, danced for me, sucked me off, took it up the ass in the shower... every last time, it was like she was being deflowered anew. Hells, maybe breaking in Rachel had beenmy purpose for a while there.

So when she'd told me she had a hot friend I might be interested in, I couldn't understand what the point could be.

Honestly, even after I met Joanna, I wasn't impressed. She was crazy sexy, yes, and in that precise cheap way. Big fat tits, big fat ass, thick thighs, and the calibre of facial beauty of every hot bitch I'd ever been intimidated by as a younger man. Rachel would make a man tongue-tied, but Joanna simply dropped his jaw and held it there. Still, what would I want with such a woman when I had Rachel? Sweet, agreeable Rachel, who giggled amicably when I told her my idea of a fun Friday night hangout would be to watch her practice her strip tease for me while I spent the money we made from streaming it on fresh metaseeds for my infernal garden.

Then the little idiot stepped out of her place and brewed that so-called potion of hers.

At first, I really thought I'd dispelled it. It was until I'd conducted a thorough inventory of my stockpile that I realized either Rachel had wasted a ton of ingredients, or had overblown the dosage twice over. At least. I'd never know where exactly she fucked it all up. Lucky for her she didn't turn her friend inside out or open a portal to the fifth layer of Cantis Movania in her stomach. If I were guessing, I'd suspect she transposed some of the ingredients by fucking up the ancient Tamil pronouns, misidentifying the brewer, imbiber and focus of the imbiber's fixation.

The effect, insofar as I could surmise through observation, was that Joanna was obsessively preoccupied by her friendly affection for Rachel, while at the same time being overwhelmingly drawn to her physical attraction to me. Like the love potion had been split more or less in half between the two of us, then each half doubled.

"I think I dribbled some on the floor. Be a doll and lick it up for me."

"What? Fuck you. No way, that's disgusting."

"Yeah, but I think it'd really turn me on to see you do it."

She tensed. "It... it would?"

"It might."

Her eyes darted back and forth between me and the dribbles I'd deposited on the cabin's concrete floor. "Fine," she huffed. "But just this once."

I waited until she was bent over and gave her an open-palmed slap on the ass. Her knees went weak for a moment before she went altogether rigid; bent over as she was, I could see her pussy literally throbbing, trying to reel me in like it was a human cock vacuum.

Did I say doubled? Make that tripled.

Nevertheless, I was pretty sure Joanna hated me. At least intellectually. I'll be honest, I kind of loved that about her. In hindsight, my quest to make Rachel my love slave had actually been pretty short-sighted. I'd wanted to fuck her, and that was the obvious time-tested manner to achieve that goal. Then I messed up and made her my bestest buddy, and... I couldn't believe how much better it was. A love slave was a needy thing, always pursuing its own objective -- namely, my pleasure. But it begged, it fixated, it had an agency of its own (after a fashion). But Rachel's love potion had left her with her own personality, happily indulging me in any manner I wanted to meddle with it when and how I pleased so long as I didn't neglect her.

Then along came Joanna. The woman wanted less than nothing to do with me. At first, I'd thought if I was going to get anything out of her, it would be by peer pressuring her through Rachel. That would have been amusing, if not as good as what I had with Rachel. Just seeing her acquiesce in each delicious increment -- coming to my house, ditching her shirt, her pants, her underwear, letting me touch her... It had been a delightful diversion. When I finally realized that she wasn't merely humoring me for Rachel's sake, but in fact had been addicted to my sexual satisfaction from the get-go... damn. She wasn't even attracted to me, nor did she share my appetites to any large extent. But whenever she found something that would turn me on, she latched onto it like a fat kid with a bag of Reese's.

She was available to me whenever I wanted, however I wanted, and when I wanted something she didn't, she caved in an Abyssal second. And once I was no longer in the mood, she wanted nothing to do with me.

"So... can I?" she said, sinking to her knees and eyeing my cock hopefully.

"Nah, not ready yet." This was a lie. I wasn't about to take a week's vacation in this woman's parents' cabin without bringing along some stamina serum. Thanks to the massive revenue I was hauling in from Rachel's cam streams, being unable to afford materials for my lab was a memory. I had that thing stocked to the gills -- and also due to Rachel, had taken to tracking my inventory a good deal more closely. "But hey, why don't you go out and skinnydip for me. Improves the view."

"We're not the only cabin on the lake. People will see me."

"So? I like seeing a hot babe splashing around. But if you don't think it's worth it, fine."

It was amazing those tits of hers didn't bobble up and hit her in the face, she dashed off so fast.

Cheap. How had I ever thought a pair of tits like that could be cheap?

One of these days, I'd probably remember a reason I should go back to Rachel and give the poor girl a thrill. I'd simply been so focused on breaking in Joanna, and indulging myself with some minor emotional masochism at her expense, that I hadn't had time to see to her. Besides, it was fun watching her squirm, too. I'd long since realized the potion I'd dosed her with at that cookout, while ineffective insofar as the "love" component was concerned, nevertheless had heightened her arousal. I don't think she was even conscious of it herself, but no other girl I'd ever been with got that wet or came that hard from my clumsy attentions. Between lack of Us Time and plain old horniness, she was probably all too ready for me. Maybe even ready enough to initiate things herself for once. Served her right for being too pouty to volunteer for the threesome getaway.

Ah, well. We'd get her there.

Joanna came trotting back in from the back yard a while later. I'd been doing a little light reading from Hanzig'sRuminations on My Century of Madness and Lamentation for Its Cure to unwind. It was dark out now. How long had it been? Hours, no doubt. She was definitely pretty pruney, and shivering like crazy. The woman was probably furious at me for sending her out there only to ignore her. Humiliated by being seen naked by her neighbors. Disgusted with herself for agreeing to it so meekly. Fearful someone had caught it on camera. Relieved no one had called the cops.

But what won out?

She hastily retrieved her towel from the bathroom, but rather than dry off or wrap up, she set it folded on the floor and knelt atop it. "So do I get to blow you now or what?"

Purpose.

All the potions in the world couldn't turn Joanna into a decent driver. I'd hoped to lean my seat back and nap on the ride home, but there was always another near catastrophe over the next hill. Suspicion took root that she was doing it on purpose to keep me awake so I might get bored and give her a cheap feel, finger her a little. But it was more fun to watch her want it, and I wasn't about to reward her for being mischievous or incompetent, whichever it was.

"So, do you think maybe we could see if Rachel wants to come over once we get home?"

I wondered how long she'd been waiting to ask. My lack of interest in their drama had been rendered manifestly clear to her, but I knew it was eating at her nonetheless. When Rachel scrambled her priorities with that moron stunt of hers, I didn't really know whether Rachel's friendship or my sexual satisfaction had been ranked higher. It wasn't important. If it turned out she needed Rachel more than me, I'd just have Rachel serve her up on a platter. As such, I'd punished her every time she brought it up by withholding for as long as I could withstand the temptation. It always felt longer to her than it did to me.

That she'd held out until we were only minutes from my house was actually pretty impressive.

"I thought you two were having a little lovers' quarrel?"

"One, we aren't lovers. I told you inviting her to a threesome was only going to piss her off. Hell, it pissedme off, and I'm..."Pathetically incapable of refusing you anything you desire, I finished for her. "And for two, she's had almost a week to cool off. Maybe she's ready to make up." She sniffed. "We always make up eventually."

"Then I'm sure you will this time. Look, why don't you drop me off, I'll let you give me a quick blowjob, then you can run on over to her place and pillow fight it out, or whatever it is you gals do."

"Whatever it is us gals do?" she repeated with a smirk. "We apologize and make up, like fucking adults. It's not mysterious. You should try it sometime."

Five minutes later, I got to smirk back as she skipped to and from the car to bring in our luggage, her hair in pigtails, wearing nothing but her underwear. "Real fucking grown-up, Joanna."

"Joanna want Knoxie dicky!" she whined in a high-pitched voice, sucking her thumb.

(Oh, and I made her talk like that, too.)

But I slammed the door in her face. Let her dump some of that bitchy energy she'd been storing up on Rachel. For now, I was going to kick off my shoes, feed the tarantuthor, and...

Fuck me.

Someone had been in here.

That wasn't some sort of brainiac deduction, like I'd opened the fridge and noticed the mustard was out of place. No, it would have been obvious to anyone. I'd never seen my house in such a state!

It was, quite simply... immaculate.

If I didn't know better, I would have thought I hired a cleaning crew. Or five of them. It wasn't simply that things were tidy. If it were that, I would have simply assumed that Rachel had been over and tried to ingratiate herself with a little elbow grease. No, this was something else altogether.

Everything was in its place. Eerily so. The floors -- shit, and thewalls?! -- had been scrubbed of every bit of grime and grit. Knick-knacks were arranged in perfect perpendicularity on the surfaces they inhabited. Anything that wasn't functional or decorative was out of sight, leaving in their wake the unshakable impression that they had been put precisely where they belonged.

The closer I looked for any trace of my home's natural state, the more I was impressed by the level of improvement. The dust on the chandelier over the entryway, which could only be removed with an extension ladder? Gone. The dust bunnies under the hutch? Hibernating elsewhere. The pantry... oh god, the pantry. Everything neatly aligned, ingredient containers stacked just so, and... fuck me, was italphabetized?

Room after room, the same. Could Rachel have really gone to this extreme? She liked to tidy up for me, sure, but nothing close to this level. This was someone with a complex. Had my ditching her for a week-long fuckathon with her buddy actually broken her? I doubted it. Whoever had done this, they'd been through the whole house, from the living room to the kitchen to the front closet to the--

Oh,shit.

I raced downstairs, and there in my workspace was at last a little mess. Except this was manifestly more disturbing. My workspace was the one place that had already been as clean as the upstairs.

It wasn't filthy, no. But it was unclean. Numerous containers of reagents had been left open. Glassware was sitting in the wash basin, and some of it still had residue in the bottoms of the flasks. The Talisman of Amn Gourdek was sitting on a table, discarded like a used kleenex. I hastily hung it from its zinc hook, one of the only materials that would prevent its infernal tendrils from questing through everything they touched in search of ley lines to usher in the next cataclysm. Whoever had left it out clearly had no idea what they were dealing with. Here in the suburbs it would take the thing months, but still, only a complete imbecile would treat it so dismissively.

I only knew one person who cleaned my house, considered herself a dabbler in the warlock arts, and whose defense for ushering in the end of an age would be "oops, my bad."

It was some hours before I was satisfied with my inspection and the tidying of my workspace (what the dunderhead who'd trashed the place called my "fungeon"). There were numerous tomes out of order, and nearly every container of raw materials had at least been opened. In all the chaos, I frankly had no idea what she might have been attempting to do in here. Her so-called love potion had at least been a comparatively straight-forward undertaking. One of the ingredients was exclusive, others nearly so. But this? This was a warlock's sampler platter. There was nothing in all of arcana that used all this. She could have made ten potions with this. Contacted five planes. Banished half the demons in the halls of Congress.

I wasn't sure what to make of it. She'd violated the sanctity of my workspace. Defied my expressed order not to meddle in things beyond her comprehension. Made a mess of the only place in the house where I cared about the cleanliness, and cleaned the shit out of the rest. She'd done something, clearly, but what?

Knowing Rachel, it probably wasn't what she'd set out to do. No, in a circumstance like this, there was only one thing to do.

Arm myself to the fucking teeth.

The moon was nearing its zenith as I made my way up the walk to Rachel's door. I was ready for anything. If I opened it up and an arachnid with Rachel's face the size of a buick was cocooning Joanna after implanting her with larvae, I was going to handle it. I took a final deep breath to calm myself, and twisted the knob, the magical equivalent of a dump truck of Raid in my other hand, fist clenched tightly around it.

"I don't wanna wait for our liiiiives to be oooover, I want to know right now what will it beeeee!" came two obnoxiously loud, painfully out of tune female voices from the living room.

All right, so a No to the giant spider possibility.

There in the living room were Rachel and Joanna, the latter laying down with her head in the former's lap as they sang along with the opening credits ofDawson's Creek. They were both in their underwear, but whatever squeamishness they had about threesomes seemed not to apply to cuddling in their bras and panties during chick-show binging. The lights were out except for the flickering of the TV and a scented candle burning on the coffee table. Fresh-baked brownie, I was pretty sure. Rachel liked the food-scented ones -- said smelling them was as good as eating them. Kept her in shape. I sure as hell wasn't complaining.

I had entered the room behind them, but after a moment, Rachel's head turned to see me. Her face was in shadows, but I was still pretty sure there was no third eye, no black veins, and when she spoke, I didn't see an adder at the end of her tongue. All good signs.

"Hey there, stranger!" she waved.

Joanna shot upright in an instant -- then screamed in terror.

To be fair, I didn't exactly look like myself. I was much more into the warlock aesthetic: robe, staff, a half dozen glowing vials at my belt. Oh, and a mask. The Miser's Mask was in part a defense against life-draining effects, though it was also a practical consideration in case, again, Rachel-spider tried to ram her ovipositor down my throat. Hard to breathe in the thing, though.

Rachel hurried to calm her friend down, and after a few moments, she at least looked like she wasn't about to snatch her taser from her purse and zap me. Hmm. Tasing was something I definitely hadn't planned on. Oops.

"Why the fuck are you dressed like that?!" Joanna demanded, still not convinced I was who I said I was.

"Trick or treat?" What? Was that really what I'd gone with?

But Rachel only laughed, then stood up and spread her arms wide. "You're such a joker. Now are you gonna give me a hug or do I have to hold you down and force one on ya?"