Chapter 1

Everything changed after that first night, when Amanda gave Laura a sorely needed, if not entirely chaste, foot massage. At least it Hadn't been entirely chaste on Amanda's part, but she suspected Laura hadn't had any sexual thoughts, although, who could tell? Laura had been the closest Amanda had ever seen to the fable of asexuality. Things didn't all happen right after that night, it took a long time and it was the result of many choices, made by both roommates, but that had been the pivotal moment, the point of no return, which would establish the ground for their relationship from then on.

When Amanda woke up the day after, she saw Laura had already left. Although it had been expected, she would have preferred to have breakfast with her, to see what her reactions were like, and whether she'd behave any differently towards her. Thinking back to it all, and in the cold light of day, Amanda realised she had been very unsubtle, and probably only her roommate's exasperating social cluelessness, combined with her apparent lack of interest in sexual matters, had saved her from the embarrassment which could have resulted, if Laura had noticed what was up and called Amanda on it.

Whatever had been done was in the past, though, and Amanda would just have to make sure she didn't fall into those temptations again where her roommate was concerned, or, at least, not to be quite so obvious about it. She could hardly believe how little control she had kept over herself, especially at the end, when she kissed Laura's slender pretty feet. What would she have done, what excuse would she have used, if her roommate had been wakeful enough to notice?

The situation had become, if anything, more urgent. Amanda still hadn't talked to Laura about her sexual needs, and she couldn't wait anymore. She knew that if she started the day masturbating half her morning would go down the drain, but after the previous night's episode she could no longer contain herself. She got up, still in her night clothes, and looked for her vibrator, on the drawer where she had put it back after her last ill-fated attempt. She couldn't avoid gasping when she realised it was no longer there! Only a note from her roommate's anachronistically neat handwriting stood in its place: "I'm sorry, but I cannot abide being in the same room as that instrument. Please, forgive me, Laura."

Amanda didn't know how to react. At first, she simply read the note, her gesture confused and uncomprehending. That couldn't possibly say what it said! Then, realising it did say it, and, furthermore, it did mean it, she started getting angry. She was frustrated. Her nipples were erect, and the dreams she had been having for the whole night had driven her crazy. She was ready to ask for a room change that very second, but she tried to calm herself. Surely it would be possible to talk this out with Laura and reach a reasonable compromise. The gall of that girl! How did she dare impose her narrow, retrograde, self-denying morality on Amanda? Whatever had she done to deserve this!

After a few minutes of pacing around the room, trying to calm herself, she decided she would talk it over with her roommate that night, demand an apology, and if she still wasn't satisfied after that, she would ask for a different roommate. Being attracted to Laura, her heart wanted to get things sorted out, so she could stay with her, but her head also knew how it only complicated things further. However, vibrator or no, she needed an orgasm, and she needed it right then, so she returned to bed, lay down, and tried to think about Nadya, one of her previous girlfriends, whom she had had very good sex with.

She lay on her back, and she begun to slowly stroke herself with her hand. She hadn't always had a vibrator, and she would manage to survive without one. She started by simply using her palm on her pubic area, brushing against her lips, and slowly teasing them open with her fingers. She was already rather excited, and this treatment sped up her breath, and got her flushed. With her free hand, she began to pinch one of her nipples, between finger and thumb, as she continued circling around her lips. Soon she opened them fully, and with deft and practiced fingers, she started lightly pressing on her clitoris. She quickly lost patience with her slow approach, and begun to rub it in earnest, as her chest undulated up and down, driven by the urgency of her needs.

It didn't take long to get herself moaning. She muttered little sounds, half pronounced endearments, bits of sweet nonsense, remembered from her time with Nadya. She had been little and diaphanous, even more so than Amanda herself, and she could remember feeling her light body on her, or grasping her arms and touching her tiny bones, and being almost afraid of breaking her. A breeze could take her away, Amanda used to say. She had been an extremely accomodating girlfriend, learning Amanda's body, making sure to please her as well as she could, and Amanda remembered how she used to lay little kisses around her mound, a prelude to more intimate attentions. She would then start using the tip of her tongue, lightly caressing her lips, and Amanda would first moan, then demand, then grab Nadya's head, compelling her to stop her teasing. She'd lick up and down Amanda's cleft, at last stimulating Amanda's clitoris, as Amanda would grab her hair.

At last, after a few minutes of this, Amanda managed to get an orgasm, her first in a while. It made her body quake, from head to toe. Her limbs flailed aimlessly, her head turned hard to the left, and her voice sounded a long sustained note in velvet, unarticulated and raw as her own pleasure.

As she had thought, by the time she was ready to begin working, half of Amanda's morning was gone. At least at night her energy was running low, and she could easily fall into sleep after just a few minutes of play, but in the morning, wide awake and full of life, her appetite was far harder to satiate. That's why she avoided doing such things early, except when a partner was at hand: then it was all the better to have a big appetite.

Unlike Laura, whose work involved actual subjects, much of Amanda's work could be done from her own room. Finding and programming better algorithms for her sensors, for instance. Of course, eventually everything would have to get field-tested, but that was still far away. So instead of going out to work at the department, where she could use the workstations and reference libraries, she decided to stay in for the day. If she needed more cycles or references she didn't have at hand she could always use the uni's intranet for that, and she didn't feel much like going out: the weather looked unpleasant.

In the meantime, Laura was working at one of the labs, trying to deal with her not very cooperative subjects, unsuitably arranged equipment, tiredness, and her own thoughts. She was trying to record the readings on the mental states of her subjects under different environmental conditions, trying to find out if she could get a strong correlation somewhere between those readings and the emotions at play. There had been a lot of previous work towards such correlations, but it rarely generalised to all subjects, or even a good deal of them. She was starting to think perhaps a degree of personal calibration would always be necessary.

"Do you have a girlfriend?" she asked her subject.

"Sure, she's called Catherine. She's also a student, I met her a couple of years ago."

The subject, Alan, was a student trying to get a little money. He was in his early 20s, tall, and thin. He had been oggling Laura with interest from the first time he saw her, and she was getting rather tired of his attitude.

"What if I told your girlfriend how you're looking at me, would you like that?"

"Hey, Cat's a reasonable person. I've just looked. I mean, it's a compliment for fuck's sake. Why do you sound so pissed off about it?"

"So, you wouldn't mind me telling your girlfriend. Please, will you give me her comm tag?"

"You crazy? What's this about? My girl's no part of this experiment, she hasn't consented to any of this. You can't just call her and dump stuff like this on her."

"Let me worry about the ethics review, yes? Comm tag. You've agreed to cooperate in answering as fully and sincerely as you're able. I'm sure you're able to cast her comm now."

He slid his fingers for a while on his watch, looking for her details, until he found them.

"I'm doing this under protest. I want it on the fucking record." He tapped a few times and Laura's comm chirped. She took it out of her pocket. Her comm was large and unwieldy, rather unfashionable, or, perhaps, a fashion statement all its own. She started tapping something on it, perhaps a short passphrase or something. She didn't seem to be wired for sound either, as she soon placed it by her ear.

"Cat? Yes, your boyfriend's sitting here with me. We're doing an experiment, he's the subject. Ah, you knew about it? Yes, I just wanted to call you to let you know he seems to be looking at me very ... persistently. Ah, he does that a lot then?"

Laura's comm chirped as Alan kept knocking to join the call, frantically fingering his watch.

"Let me join the fucking call right now. I'm not taking this shit from anyone."

"Yes, he is rather rude, isn't he? I guess you've settled for his looks. I don't know if I've have done the same, but each to their own."

"Either you let me join the call or I quit right now. No joke."

"Ok, Alan. Calm down now. I'm going to let you join the call."

"Hi, honey", he said soothingly. "You see, this stuck-up woman, she thinks I'm always looking at her, but you know I've no eyes for anyone else, yes? Come on, she's just playing around for her experiment or whatever, she's all work, I guarantee. Aren't you going to say anything?"

That's when Alan heard the laughter coming through the comm. Not just giggles, or quiet chuckles, but deep rolling laughter, coming from a voice he couldn't recognise.

"Oh goodness, Laura! You are something! I can't believed he swallowed it", said Amanda through the comm. "You shouldn't play with the subjects so much, you know", she chided.

"What? What's this all about?" he asked.

"See you later, Amanda, I'm going to explain it all to the boy in words he can understand", said Laura while cutting the call and putting her comm back in her pocket. "You were right about something: your girlfriend hasn't consented to anything, so obviously I couldn't call her and tell her how interested you seem to be in the female shape. Instead I called my roommate, Amanda, after quickly explaining the situation via text. I thought you were dumb enough to believe it, and I was right."

"But that's..." Relief and anger fought in Alan's mind, as Laura looked amused. "That's fucking low, fuck's sake. I can't believe you've done this to me."

"I needed some data, I got some data. You needed some money, you got some money. Both satisfied, yes? Anyway, interview's over. Next subject will be around in a few minutes. See you in a week, assuming you still want to participate?"

"Want to participate? Why would I want to participate? Get another toy."

"Well, up to you. You know if you discontinue participation in an experimental protocol without cause we won't call you for anything else, right? Laura said this as she unplugged the systems and got things ready to change subject. "It's been a pleasure to work with you, Alan. Good-bye."