"Of course you are. A fascinating one, certainly. But a subject nonetheless." He produced something else from his pocket—a sleep mask, black silk, innocuous until you considered the context. "You're going to learn something important today. The first of many lessons."
"Don't you dare—"
The mask slipped over my eyes with practiced ease, plunging me back into darkness. This time worse because I couldn't move, couldn't defend, couldn't do anything but lie there and hate him with every fiber of my being.
"Your safe word is 'crimson,'" he said, and I could hear him moving around the room. "Use it if you genuinely need the session to stop—medical emergency, panic attack that threatensyour breathing, actual harm. Using it frivolously will have consequences."
"My safe word is 'let me fucking go.'"
"Clever, but no." Something else clicked into place—ankle restraints, spreading my legs despite my attempts to kick. "You're going to count for me, Lilah. Out loud, clearly. If you lose count, we start over. If you refuse to count, we continue until you choose to begin. Understood?"
"I don't understand any of this!" I pulled against the restraints, accomplishing nothing except tiring myself out. "What are you talking about? Count what?"
"Orgasms," he said simply. "We're going to discover your limit. For science."
The words didn't compute. Couldn't compute. "You're insane. You're actually insane. You can't just—"
Something pressed between my legs. Through the thin cotton of the panties they'd given me, vibrating at a frequency that made me jolt.
"I can, actually. Section 23-F of your contract specifically covers sexual response conditioning." He adjusted the pressure, the angle, holding it in place with mechanical precision. "Would you like to count, or shall we make this harder than necessary?"
"Stop!" I tried to close my legs, to shift away, but the restraints held me in place. "This is assault! This is—"
The vibration increased. Not painful, but insistent. Pressing against me in a way that made my body respond despite every mental protest.
"This is exactly what you agreed to," he said calmly. "Your body's arousal response to controlled stimuli. The psychologicalimpact of forced pleasure. The breaking point between defiance and submission. All clearly outlined in the documentation you signed."
I bit my lip hard enough to taste copper, trying to focus on that pain instead of the building sensation between my legs. But he adjusted again, found the angle that made my hips jerk involuntarily, and I knew I was fighting a losing battle.
"Count, Lilah. Make this easier on yourself."
"Never." The word came out breathless, undermined by the tremor in my voice.
"Very well. We'll do this the difficult way."
The vibration increased again. Patterns now—waves and pulses that seemed designed to prevent adaptation. Every time my body started to adjust, he changed the rhythm, the pressure, the speed. Clinical in his precision, devastating in his effectiveness.
I lasted three minutes before the first orgasm hit. Maybe less. Time meant nothing when your body betrayed you so completely, when pleasure became punishment and resistance became pointless. It rolled through me like thunder, making me cry out despite myself.
"Count," he reminded me gently. "Or we reset."
I pressed my face into the mattress, shame and fury and something else mixing into a cocktail of emotions I couldn't swallow.
He didn't stop. Didn't even pause. The vibration continued through the aftershocks, through the hypersensitivity, through the moment when pleasure tipped into too much. Iwrithed, trying to escape, succeeding only in grinding myself more firmly against the relentless stimulation.
The second orgasm built faster, my body already primed and responsive. This time I screamed into the mattress, hands fisting in the restraints.
"Still not counting." His voice held infinite patience. "We can do this all day, Lilah. I cleared my schedule specifically for you."
All day. The threat of it, the promise of it, made something crack inside my chest.
The third orgasm destroyed any pretense of control. I sobbed through it, body convulsing, every nerve ending lit up like a brutal firework display.
"One!" The word tore from my throat, raw and desperate. "One, okay? Fucking one!"
"Language," he chided, but the vibration decreased slightly. A reward for compliance. "Continue."
I lost count at seven. Or was it eight? Everything blurred together—pleasure and pain, defiance and desperation, the way my body chased sensations even as my mind screamed stop. He made me start over, patient as a priest taking confession, until numbers became my only language.
