The Box Ch. 01: "Beginnings"

She feared the box. She was aroused by the box.

The first time he brought it with him, he didn't mention it once. He carried it under his arm, almost hidden by the dark winter coat laid over his forearm. As he was setting his things down, he placed the box carefully onto the low table in the living room.

Thereafter, he didn't mention it. He didn't even look at it.

It drew from her the occasional curious glance. It was crafted from polished mahogany, with an elaborate curling brass design set into its curved lid. It was a few inches deep, rectangular, dense and sturdy looking. It reminded her of a 19th century jewellery box or perhaps a cutlery service.

But she soon forgot it as he began to distract her with his lips and fingers.

He had for some time tricked and teased her with the promise of release. Sometimes he assured her that she would come, after such a long time in denial, only to rescind on his promise and leave her either gasping on the edge or, occasionally, teasing her towards an exquisite ruin, so carefully crafted she sometimes could barely distinguish it from the edge towards which he lead her. On other occasions, he would talk her away from the edge, demanding she be careful, demanding she be a good girl, to ensure she was still chaste, that this was how he liked her, wracked with desire, every nerve around her body as sensitive as the one tiny place he would not touch, only to suddenly force her over, either with his playful fingers or by whispering in her ear, demanding she shake and shudder with pleasure, that she dissolve into a haze of shivering release, again and again, beyond her ability to endure, until she would beg for him to stop the waves of torturous pleasure.

Sometimes, he would.

She knew he was doing this deliberately, to make every moment of potential orgasm fraught with uncertainty, to keep the danger of denial or pleasure alive, to keep it electric and exciting. Further, she knew he knew all about operant conditioning. She knew he knew that inconsistent reinforcement was actually more effective than reliable reinforcement. And she knew he knew she knew this. And even knowing it made her wet with desire.

But tonight he was soft and sweet and tender with her, stroking and licking her into a mindless, melting liquid, into which he dripped gentle words and praise like poetry, somehow eliciting from her shuddering orgasm after orgasm, until she became floating motes of sensation in some timeless deep space trance, pooled on the bed like spilled quicksilver, unable to move, able only to follow the sensation of his fingers as they stroked at her hair, traversed her skin, squeezed her shoulders, kneaded her muscles.

She drifted into a dreamless slumber, wrapped in his arms, her buttocks pressed into his groin, his hardness nestled enticingly between her legs.

* * *

The box sat, closed, on the mantlepiece above the fireplace for a week. He never mentioned it.

And that week he forbade her from touching herself. He declined to touch her, too, although he was loving and tender towards her. The only physical contact he made was when, occasionally, he would catch her looking at the box and he would smile, and stroke her throat, and ask her to recall what it was that killed the cat.

"Curiosity," she would reply.

Or he would come up behind her unnoticed, as she stared at it, and surprise her by slipping an arm around chest, and pinch a nipple until it stung, put his lips close to her ear and whisper: "'Curiouser and curiouser', cried Alice..." quoting from the book she was reading at the time.

* * *

And then, one night, she noticed the box was gone from the mantlepiece.

Again, he made no mention of it. They sat in the living room, a fire crackling in the grate as the winter snow fell outside in the evening darkness, each of them absorbed in a book. But she was distracted. Her attention kept wandering to the mantlepiece and the missing box. She found herself crossing and uncrossing her legs, rereading the same paragraph over and over. At some point, she looked up to discover him watching her. He was smiling.

He put his book down.

"Follow me," he said, in that certain tone of voice she loved, and she did, trailing him into the bedroom and stopping before the freshly made bed upon which she saw he had laid the box, where its weight made it sink into the duvet. It sat there in the middle, a black obelisk in a sea of cream.

And this time he regarded it for some time, before turning to her to confirm she, too, was looking at it. Indeed she was. A dozen burgeoning questions dwelt upon her lips. He brushed them aside when he drew his thumb across her mouth, dissolved them with a soft and tender kiss. Then he curled his fingers around her throat, eliciting from her a moan, and dragged her over to a chair, into which he pressed her, growling into her ear: "Be still." And then he stripped and bound her.

She found herself naked, her arms affixed behind the seat of the chair, her ankles tight against its front legs, her own legs parted, her thighs wrapped in loops of soft rope and drawn apart, opening her. He even took the time to ease a cushion behind her back, arching it forward and forcing her to present her breasts.

He remained dressed in his suit. Not even his tie was out of place.

He walked around her, admiring her, praising her.

Then he reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew something. It dangled and swung in the dim light of the bedroom. A thin silver chain, its links tiny. It was a simple, fine necklace.

He moved behind her, brushed the back of her neck with his fingertips, sending shivers across her skin, and then gently but firmly slid his fingers into her hair. Sometimes he would grasp her hair suddenly and unexpectedly. Other times, as now, he would do it slowly, in order to fill her with anticipation. Ever then, the tug might be quick, or perhaps exquisitely slow. She would never be sure which was coming.

This time it was slow and deliberate and as the pressure built she moaned. He angled her head up to make her look at what he was holding in his other hand.

It was the chain he had drawn from his jacket pocket. And now, dangling in front of her eyes, she noticed something hanging from it.

It was a small brass key, just about the right size for the keyhole on the front of the box.

It spun and glittered in the dim light of the room as his fingers entwined themselves deeper into her hair, fixing her head in place.

"This box," he nodded at it, "and everything within it is a gift."

He released her hair and moved around her to make his way to the box. He inserted the key and turned it, just once. Something in the mechanism detached with a heavy, spring-loaded click and the top of the box popped up a few millimetres.

Something about this thrilled her heart and fluttered in her belly. The nipples he had pinched throughout the week throbbed. Despite her thighs being parted and fixed in place by her bonds, despite the cushion at her back arching her chest forward, making her feel as open and exposed as should could think to be, she felt her hips melt wider, she felt a shiver across her belly, she felt her labia begin to slick and slide against themselves.

"I'm sure you're curious to see what's inside," he said, "but today it is a test. And a one-way door, through which we can step. If you wish. If you decide to take that step, we may be exploring for some time. Weeks. Months. Would you like that?"

Her mouth felt dry. Her skin tingled.

"Yes," she said.

"Very well. Here is the test. I'm going to start touching you." Her hips jerked even at the thought of this, after such a long period of abstinence. "And you can ask me to stop at any time. And I will. I promise. Do you understand?"

She nodded.

"But if today you do ask me to stop, you will never see the box again."

He moved somewhere behind her and she heard him doing something, sliding something from his pocket. Then she heard the clack of clockwork being wound. A click and then, right beside her ear, ticking.

"This timer is set for a certain period. Once it expires, once the alarm sounds, the box is yours. Unless ... whilst it is ticking, you should come," he whispered. "If you do, you will never see the box again. Do you understand?"

Again, wordlessly, she nodded. Another click and the ticking ceased.

"Let's see how strong your curiosity really is, Alice," he said.

And he began to touch her.

It was delightful. His fingertips traced across her skin, spiralling in feather-light patterns, up her arms, across her shoulders, down her back, along her thighs. Butterfly touches, feather brushes, occasionally there came a startling scratch, sometimes a sudden pinch, but always returning to easy caresses, turning her muscles into warm toffee whilst her vulva throbbed and swelled and ached. He always skirted around her nipples, drifted closer to but not quite upon her sopping lips, brushed near her clit.

And as he went on, his caresses became firmer, more purposeful. Scratches began to sear her chest and back, a sudden slap on her thigh caused her whole body to vibrate in response.

She felt herself begin to float, to disappear into pure sensation. Her thoughts evaporated, there was only a sea of caresses punctuated by moments like explosions in a winter's night sky: a tug on her hair, sudden teeth on the back of her neck, a pinch, a slap, a fingernail and then...

There was a brief pause when he lifted his hands away from her skin completely. She was left with nothing but echoes of touch reverberating around her body.

Then she heard it. A click. And the ticking began.

His breathy whisper, hot beside her ear: "Remember your task." Her eyes flickered open and she blinked at the box, still there open the bed. She had all but forgotten it. Yes, she was supposed to... no, she was supposed not to-

But he laid his fingers, one each on either side of her desperate clit, and began, very simply, to stroke. Up on the left and down on the right, then up on the right and down on the left; slowly, firmly, unceasingly.

"Oh," she gasped, as it began. And "Oh" and "Oh!" and her eyes flickered closed again. And she understood that this was when the test really had begun.

It was exquisite. It was torture. It was unbearable.

Tick, tick, tick, the timer clicked on.

She moaned and writhed, as best she could in the bonds, but even as she tried to draw her hips away from his fingers he simply followed, keeping exactly the same pressure, exactly the same speed. She felt herself edging closer and closer, far too fast. She wanted to warn him how dangerously effective this was but would that be asking him to stop? The words died on her lips.

She tried to breathe slowly and calmly, to quiet her rising excitement. She tried to count the ticks of the timer. She tried to count the whorls of the pattern on the wallpaper. She began to pant.

"Oh it's..." she moaned.

"What's that?" he murmured. "It's too much? You want me stop?"

She bit her lip hard to stop herself talking any further. The pain sharpened her senses but then began to mingle with the pleasure and that made things worse. Her thighs, her buttocks, her spine began to tingle.

"Oh, please..." she whispered.

"Please? Please what? Please stop? Please go faster?"

Eventually she found herself trying to recall passages from the book she had been reading, in an effort to distract herself.

"Well, then," said the Cat, "you see, a dog growls when it's angry and wags its tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad."

"I call it purring, not growling," said Alice.

Somehow this calmed her ache, brought it just under control, as she thought of the Hatter and the Queen, and the grin of the Cheshire Cat and the rabbit hole, tumbling, tumbling down, to a strange, upside-down nonsense world.

But he must have noticed, for, without ceasing his fingers' busy work, he placed his lips right beside her ear and started whispering.

"Relax ... you can come whenever you want," he said.

The wickedness of this was so outrageous that it actually distracted her from her pleasure for a moment. Her eyes opened briefly to catch a glimpse of herself in the bedroom mirror, sheened in perspiration, his face beside hers, her naked body, his dark suit, his eyes boring into her, him grinning, like the Cheshire Cat.

Then her eyes snapped shut again as he continued his cruelty.

"In fact, it would please me to see you gasping, moaning, screaming as that sweet release floods through you. Don't you want to please me with your pleasure?"

I growl when I'm pleased, she thought to herself, trying to ignore his voice.

Tick, tick tick, went the timer.

"Don't you deserve that sweet flood of delight? I think you do. I think you should come, sweet girl."

I call it purring, not growling, she thought, trying to ignore, trying to ignore-

"I want you to. Do it for me."

She felt something welling up inside herself. She had lost control. She knew it. His fingers and his voice and the tight, tight ropes around her had overcome her. She let out a sound from deep within her belly that she had never made before, a moan of resignation, of defeat, an animal sound.

Was it a growl?

She felt tears welling up in her eyes even as she resigned herself to the inevitability of release.

Or a purr?

And then a new sound. A bell, ringing. And suddenly his hands had left her.

The alarm! The ticking had stopped. The timer had expired.

She was there, still, right on the crest of the edge. She dared not even breathe, for fear it would send her over.

But ... the timer had expired. She could tip, if she wanted to, she could enjoy the most profound and exquisite orgasm she knew she would ever experience. One soft stroke of his hand, one word...

As if he could read her mind, he said: "Yes, you could."

Her breath caught, she thrust her hips forward, opening herself, offering herself, begging-

"But not today, sweet girl."

And she felt one, clean, sharp, fierce slap right at her centre, his bare hand on her lips and clit.

The stinging wave spread out from the centre. Her aching muscles shook and spasmed, her exhausted confused body collapsed and she cried a long, low frustrated moan as all the potential pleasure disappeared like ripples on the surface of a pond. Barely even a ruin, her cervix half clenched, her thighs strained against the ropes as she tried to press them closed for the merest additional sensation.

Nothing. She could not move.

And he was stroking her hair and dripping warm kisses across her face as he tenderly untied her, gathered her up in his arms and carried her over to lie her on the bed. There he wrapped her in his arms and soothed her as something akin to sobs shuddered through her.

They lay there for some time in the dim light. The fabric of his clothing felt warm against her bare skin. Then she felt something cool and fine across her throat. The chain. He eased it around her neck. It was the exact length, once he fastened the clasp at the back, to fit perfectly, just tightly enough for her to feel it against her flesh, the tiny key snug in the hollow of her throat.

He reached past her, pressed his fingers onto the lid of the box and it clicked shut. He hadn't even lifted the lid.

* * *

Over the next months, the box would disappear and then, at some point, it would return. Its contents were never the same. Toys, curios, props, ideas. Each time it disappeared, her senses became heightened, her thighs lazy and moist with desire, with the desire to know what she would discover inside.

Each time he slipped the chain from around her neck, each time he turned the key to unlock the lid, each time he eased it open, it would reveal a new wickedness.

Curiosity killed the cat, yes. But satisfaction brought it back.

Yet we are getting ahead of ourselves. The real story begins with the very first time, around a week after that night of testing, around a week of wearing the chain about her neck, the gentle weight of the key against her throat reminding her of that night, filling her with anticipation about its return.

After a week, he returned with the box tucked under his arm, almost hidden by the heavy winter coat slung over his forearm. He placed it without comment on the mantelpiece. And there it sat, for days, teasing, excruciating days.

And then, one night, as they sat in the glow of the living room fire, and she shifted in her seat, staring at a page of her book, she glanced up and felt a shiver of dreadful joy. The box was missing from the mantlepiece. And she looked over to see him gazing at her.

Smiling...