The Tenth Performance

I liked that they were having trouble concentrating.

I wondered if there was any way that I could casually slip off my underwear.

I mean, I didn't. But I thought about it.

I might've thought about it for a while. Because eventually I noticed our classmates glancing our way. Probably wondering why it was taking us so long to learn such a simple spell.

I sighed and tried my best to concentrate. And, okay, I'll admit: it shouldn't have taken Noah, Ravi and me so long. But before you judge, I'd like to see you memorize a spell while wearing just your underwear, pressed between the bodies of two hot men.

When we were done, I rolled up the scroll, re-tied the ribbon, and stood up to walk it back to Eddie. I used one hand to hold my gray blanket in place when I stood, but it still flapped around my body. People watched me walking, surely catching repeated glimpses of my legs and breasts.

I felt flushed again, thrilled to let them see me.

It took a moment, standing there with the scroll in my outstretched hand, before Eddie realized he was staring, lightly shook his head, and took the scroll from me.

"Thanks, Eddie," I said with a mischievous little smirk. Then I turned and went back to my seat. Ravi and Noah were still there, sitting on the carpet beside my pillow, waiting expectantly.

I snuggled in between them.

Onstage, Rick stood up again, paced for a moment, then turned to address the lot of us.

"So, in a moment, I'll invite you in. And we'll do this together. We'll ... we'll do ... with ..." and he paused, then said, "well, would it be okay if I didn't ask the spell to pick a partner for me?"

He said that last bit with a smile, glancing Cora's way. Making his intentions clear to the room at large. To whatever entity we'd animated with our shared intentions.

And it did seem convenient that this fantasy had come during Rick's turn, since it seemed likely that Cora would be happy to be his partner for this performance. Unless maybe this had been her fantasy? To know what sex feels like for Rick?

But if that were the case, surely Cora would have said something, right? Instead she stood up with a smile and said, "Oh, of course, yes, I can do your performance with you." And she was already lightly glowing by the time Rick held out his hands and helped her onto the stage. She stood next to him, a nervous half-smile on her lips. And to the rest of us, Rick said:

"I'm about to close my eyes and work through my part of the invocation. But Eddie says that it won't work unless I say this first, so: I'm inviting all of you to join me, your minds in my body. We'll all steer my body together, as we ..."

Rick paused, looked at his beautiful girlfriend, and smiled.

"... as we make love with Cora."

Then Rick closed his eyes and began to concentrate, presumably navigating the rooms of his internal memory palace in order to create a doorway to welcome us inside. And I closed my eyes, too, readying myself for the casting. Different from Rick's: my other classmates and I would all need to project our consciousness outward, to send ourselves through the gateway that Rick was readying for us.

As I breathed in, deeply, I tried to dispel any sense of distraction. But oh, dear reader, it was hard! Ravi's bare leg was touching mine beneath the blankets we'd wrapped our torsos in. And I was leaning ever so slightly against Noah's chest. Surrounded by that steady warmth of desire.

Still, I had to do it. I forced myself to ignore that fizzy feeling in my chest and concentrate. And so I began to cast, conjuring each of the requisite memories - the scroll had stipulated the sequence of scents, sounds, and sensations that would make this work - ending with a meditation on how it feels to float effortlessly atop warm water as a gentle current ferried me along (I assume that whichever ancient magus had originally concocted this spell wasn't thinking of a "Lazy River" ride at an outdoor summer amusement park, but, honestly, that's the memory I fell back on).

With that sensation suffusing us, the spell let us drift through the entryway Rick was creating for our minds. (More readily than usual. I learned later that the power being generated by The Spell was making all our other magic - be it Noah's vision spell, Cora's blankets, Yvonne's ropes, or Eddie's method of mingling consciousness - significantly easier to cast.)

I felt a moment's tingling numbness as I dissociated from my body ... and then, when that moment passed, I realized that I was standing and could no longer feel Ravi's or Noah's bodies beside me.

And I was fully dressed. The clothes felt unfamiliar against my skin.

Because, right. The spell had worked. I was Rick! I mean, Rick was still Rick, too. It's just that I was also Rick. My mind had joined his body.

And not just my mind - a whole crowd of us had gathered inside of Rick. We were all him, together. We couldn't feel his memories, but the thoughts that he was thinking right at that moment, and the thoughts that everyone else inside of Rick was thinking, too, were resounding through his head, creating a tumult like loud chatter at a party.

Then I heard Eddie's thoughts, inside of Rick, as Eddie tried to quiet all of us enough to conduct a count. And then Eddie thought, quite clearly, Okay, that seems to be all of us. Rick, can you go ahead and open your eyes?

When Rick opened his eyes, we looked out at the room with his perceptions coloring everything we saw - the whole world looked different because the details Rick reflexively paid attention to were different. Like, you know how they say that so much of your consciousness is actually based on prediction, your brain just filling in the sights and sounds that it expects? Rick's expectations were different than mine. Even people looked different: like, Eddie's hair seemed to be a brighter red, as though that were the main way Rick recognized him. And my tattoos seemed darker, more pronounced.

It was strange, too, for us to see all our own bodies, toppled or slumped and softly breathing, as though we'd all just suddenly fallen asleep. Right? You so rarely see what you look like with your eyes closed. Also, in toppling, the blanket had slid off my shoulders, leaving my bare torso sprawled on top of Noah, and one of my legs had ended up in Ravi's lap.

Being inside of Rick was interesting, but I found myself wishing that I could feel the sensations from within my own body, too.

Also weird: across the room, I saw my breasts slowly rise and fall. My body was breathing steadily. Placidly. Even though my mind was excited. But my mind was over here, inside of Rick.

Rick's body was certainly breathing more rapidly than that! It seemed that many of us were feeling titillated at the chance to be him, and all those emotions were influencing our autonomic responses.

And then we turned our body to look at Cora. And she smiled at us. God, okay, so, this was a moment when it felt exceptionally good to be Rick - his body was accustomed to it, but it would've made my own heart skip a beat to have Cora smiling up at me like that.

"Did it work?" Cora asked.

We nodded. Yup, Shane thought, all of us are in here!

And then Cora gave an uncharacteristically awkward smile, blushing a little. "Could you maybe ... show me that it worked?" she asked, nibbling at her lower lip.

Rick felt confused. Which meant that we all felt a bit confused, since the emotion coursed through his body and all our minds were drinking up the unfamiliar sensation of being him.

"Why?" Rick asked.

Cora said, "I don't know, it's just, if we're going to have sex, it seems like it would feel at least a little weird to do it here, in the room with everybody, if the spell didn't actually work and they were just lying there asleep. Wouldn't that be weird?"

Inside us, Quinn thought, One time, I hooked up with somebody while my roommate was sleeping right there in the room. And, Cora's right. It was weird.

Also inside of us, Yvonne thought, Have her ask us what food her grandmother never wants to eat again.

Rick said, "Why?" again. And Cora looked confused, as though the potential weirdness of fooling around in a room full of sleeping people ought to be self-evident. There was no way for Cora to know that her boyfriend was actually responding to Yvonne.

So Rick shook his head and said to Cora, "No, sorry, why would I want to know what food your grandmother won't eat?"

Cora laughed out loud.

And inside, Yvonne was giggling too, and emphatically thought, Strawberries!

Rick said, "I'm sorry ... why are strawberries funny?"

Cora just smiled, unclasping her cape, and said, "I'll tell you the story later. But, yeah, okay, you're right. The spell totally must have worked. For Yvonne at least."

For a moment, I almost felt a pang of jealousy. Cora and Yvonne had inside jokes? When had they been sharing their childhood stories? But, also, it's actually pretty hard for your mind to feel jealous if your body isn't contributing to the emotion. I was in Rick's body, and he didn't seem particularly bothered that Yvonne knew some story about Cora's grandmother that Cora hadn't told him yet. And also, my own nearly naked body was currently sprawled atop two cute guys - no need for jealousy there!

Oh, and, right: this body, the body I was in, would be having sex with Cora soon.

As in, I would be having sex with Cora soon.

Very soon.

As in, apparently we were already reaching out to cup Cora's chin between our thumb and forefingers. Tipping her face up toward ours. Then we leaned in and kissed her. We pulled Cora close, with one hand on her lower back. We caressed her with our other hand, letting our fingers traipse up along her neck, intertwining with her fine blonde hair.

Cora was a nice kisser. Her mouth was wide and soft, yet almost smiling as she kissed; her small hands stoked our shoulders and upper arms.

Although, also, there was a strange sensation, something almost like a tug or jostling inside of us, what with all my classmates (except Cora!) mingling our minds and sharing control of Rick's body. And I don't mean to judge (too much!), but it felt as though maybe some of the men inside of us were trying to reach down and get a hand between Cora's legs right away, whereas most of the rest of us were happy keeping our hands high on Cora's back and neck, letting these kisses smolder. Many of us wanted for this encounter to build up slowly, a steady crescendo so that when we finally did tug off her clothes and go down on her, it'd be easier for Cora to come.

I mean, honestly, Cora was so beautiful, and nearly always so put together, and so, so confident and calm ... and surely I'm not the only person who's had a classmate or coworker or friend like that and just wanted to know what that person would be like with their whole face and torso flushed, writhing, grunting and moaning and clutching at the sheets with their back arched and shuddering. That's normal, right? To have a friend who's so meticulously composed and just want to know what they'd be like if they let loose?

Well, I wanted to see and hear and feel Cora fall to pieces beneath me, and the best way to do that, I thought, was for us to bring her as close to the edge as we could, and keep her there for as long as we could, before toppling her into ecstasy.

So our hands were wavering with those conflicting desires - keep kissing her competing with feel her up right now! - but this was Rick's body and it seemed that whenever Rick was consciously thinking about steering us, he had a little more control over our motions than the rest of us, and although he didn't internally articulate his reasons why, well, Rick had done these things with Cora before, and so he seemed content to go along with the plan to take things slowly and let the heat gradually build.

My lips had never felt so firm while I'd been kissing someone before. It was nice, really letting me feel the softness of Cora's lips - already puffier than when we'd started - pressing against my own. Our own? Rick's own, which were mine, too, for a little while.

It was a confusing spell.

I mean, I knew intellectually that it was Rick's body, not mine, but, also? For as long as my mind was inside it, the body certainly felt like it was mine, even at times when Rick or another of our classmates was steering. And the body especially felt like it was mine at the moments when I had a thought and the body responded immediately to my intentions, no different from any other experience I'd ever had of, say, tipping my mouth to someone else's and feeling our lips grow wet with our mutual desire, our kissing, our hot breath passing into each other's open mouths.

I flicked our tongue out, gently licking the tip of Cora's tongue between her softly parted lips, tasting her, and we felt Cora's shoulders almost jump under our hands, presumably because Rick doesn't usually kiss her quite like that ... but then Cora playfully licked us back, clutching our head, our hair ... and then she was guiding us down, down to our knees, down to the floor ... then almost pushing us down, pushing us onto our back ... Cora lay our body out on the soft carpeted floor and climbed on top of us.

I tried not to feel too smug, even though it did seem like my little flick of our tongue had triggered this whole escalation.

Cora was straddling our hips. She snuck her hands in under our shirt, trawling her fingernails lightly over our ribs, then drew her hands out again. With a sly little grin, she leaned in to kiss us again, and her hands went to work on the buttons of our shirt.

Cora seemed like she was having fun. I mean, she was making out with her boyfriend. But also, with that little lick, we must have reminded her that she was also making out with someone - many someones! - other than her boyfriend, too. Which must have felt like such a heady blend of novel and familiar, for her - Rick's body, occasionally moving or responding to her touch in ways that she didn't quite expect; Rick's eyes, but with all of us feasting upon the sight of her and hungrily desiring more. When we fucked her, we'd be fucking her as a team.

As Cora worked on the last of our buttons - with her head still hovering just above ours, and still kissing us with her open mouth - we reached up and ran our hands over her rump. Cora was wearing cute black leggings, thin and inviting. As we tucked our hands under her tunic, the fabric rose over our arms, letting us glimpse the slight curve of her belly.

And, in our own pants, I felt a yearning: our cock straining to be free. I could feel it then, why people felt they needed an entirely different word. "Penis" might do most of the time, but as we kept on kissing, I realized: I had a hard cock and I wanted it inside her.

But also, I wanted to make her come.

And surely, surely, we could get Cora off: think of all the sex-having expertise we had, gathered together inside of Rick's head!

We hugged Cora closer, pulling her tight against our bare chest, kissing her more forcefully, almost startling her with the intensity of our desire. Then we rolled her onto her back. She tumbled off us, laughing. We rose up, shucking the unbuttoned shirt off our shoulders, then hooked our fingers over the waistband of her leggings. We were about to tug them down, but then paused and asked her, "Is this okay?"

Our question surprised her, since we were asking with Rick's voice - she had Rick had done this much and more so many times that they rarely articulated these questions out loud anymore. But then Cora remembered all the rest of us sharing Rick's perceptions, all of us who were about to have Cora for our first times. She nodded and murmured "yes" with her voice almost catching, sounding deep and husky.

We pulled down Cora's leggings; she raised her legs into the air and we got them past her ankles and cute little white-socked feet. As we tossed the leggings aside, I heard someone inside our head think, You know, Yvonne could've turned those into rope ...

We laughed as we leaned into Cora's body and pressed our mouth to her blue-and-white-striped underwear. We could smell her through the fabric. She squirmed when we nibbled near where her clit must be. With Rick's tongue, we licked the cotton; Cora ran her fingertips through our hair and whispered, "Take them off, please."

We happily obliged.

We tossed Cora's underwear aside before anyone could even think a request for Yvonne. And yet, Yvonne did one better for us: she leaned forward, pressed Rick's hands to the carpet on either side of Cora's body, then closed our eyes. An unexpected set of thoughts flashed through our mind: a loud thrum, the ebbing song of a springtime chorus of cicadas, the cool texture of polished marble, the bright taste of a glass of water with a generous squeeze of lemon.

When we opened our eyes, we saw that a large swath of the carpet had become a plush royal blue blanket. And Cora looked so pretty, there, lying in the center of that freshly-conjured blanket with her colorful tunic pushed up to her ribcage, her clit and vulva flushed and wet and swollen. A faint shadow showed where her pubic hair had been; that expanse of skin looked so soft and smooth.

Reader, I know that we're supposed to compare beautiful women to fussy flowers like lilies or orchids, but as we gazed at Cora, I couldn't help but think of a bright yellow dandelion: simple, sunny, and good.

We dove back into her.

I'd done this a few times before, but not enough to feel like an expert; I loved learning from the others, experiencing what my classmates made Rick's body do. For nearly a minute, Nicole traced our tongue in constricting loops, always approaching so close to Cora's clit but then pulling away just before we licked it; Cora began clutching our hair and bucking her hips, trying to make contact; finally, Nicole relented, sliding our tongue directly through her center, tasting her, until we reached her clit and circled it with our tongue ... then sucked it into our mouth. Cora gasped and moaned the word "fuck" rather loudly.

I'd known that Cora was vocal during sex - I'd heard her from down the hallway of our sleeping quarters on nights when she or Rick had slipped into the other's room - but this was different, having her right in front of me. The pitch and intensity of Cora's yelps and moans were changing with our every motion. It gave me such a sense of power, knowing that we could create so much noise with just a little flick of our tongue, another caress of our hands.

Even while our tongue and lips were busy, our hands were moving, too: with one hand we clutched Cora's firm thigh, with our other we'd worked several fingers beneath the elastic of Cora's bra and were toying with her nipple.

And Cora's clit grew so large, so pink. God, Cora was immensely gratifying to give oral sex to: between her voice, her blush, and her shudders of pleasure, we received such vivid evidence that things were going well.

Cora squirmed and moaned, still intermixing Rick's name with glorious obscenities. And then her voice sounded different: we glanced up and saw that she'd wrapped an arm over her own mouth at was biting at her biceps, muffling her cries. We kept lapping our tongue over Cora's swollen clit, maintaining a nice steady rhythm despite the way her hips were twisting under us ... then we pulled away from her for a moment - only for a moment! - to suck on the first two fingers of our left hand, getting our fingers wet and slick for her. Then we plunged our mouth back to between Cora's legs: Cora, our quivering Cora, who'd been gazing at us with such wide, dilated eyes.