The Box Ch. 03: "Different Tastes"

He flicked a glance at his watch and nodded. "Adrenaline helps accelerate the absorption of the extract. Hence our lovely struggle earlier. It should be well on its way through your system by now. I imagine you're wondering what that it does."

Ah. The final piece. She nodded.

"You tell me," he said and lay down beside her, trailing his fingers up and down her shoulder.

He stared at her in that fascinated way he had when toying with her. He loved her moans, he loved her expressions, the outward expressions of her inner states written on her face and body like a living book. He loved her faintly furrowed brow of determination as she set her mind to puzzling out some predicament he'd concocted.

She breathed more slowly and centred herself. She had been practising mindfulness, focusing on breathing and bodily sensation. It helped in day to day life but also in maintaining her edging routine. She concentrated upon the sensations from her body, the breath through her nostrils, the firm grip of the rope around her wrists and ankles, the warm, enfolding feeling of the sheets.

His fingers continued their soft, tantalising stroking that she loved upon her neck and shoulders but...

"Something wrong?" he asked. His tone was amused.

The gentle tickle of his fingers, the shimmers of pleasure they created had become ... irritating. She frowned. No, not irritating but slightly electric, perhaps. Slightly sharp?

And now she noted the usual silky feel of the bedclothes on her skin had become, well, grainy, a little like sand trapped in clothing, itching the skin.

"You're starting to notice," he said, "that certain pleasurable sensations are becoming less so. Slight pleasure is becoming irritating. Almost painful, perhaps? And weak stimulation provokes weak reaction. But stronger stimulation... well, let's see."

He leaned forward, slowly, so slowly, his eyes boring into hers, pinning her there, making her feel like the subject of an experiment. He brought his lips closer and closer to one nipple. She stiffened in anticipation. Her skin tingled and both nipples hardened even more.

Her eyes shut even as his warm lips closed around her erect pink flesh but alongside the soft, moist, enclosing pleasure she awaited-

"Ow!" she exclaimed.

"Don't move."

"But-"

"I want you to stay still," he growled. So close to her breast, his warm breath as he spoke felt like dozens of tiny needles pricking at her flesh. She held herself quite still. Slowly, he lowered his lips onto her nipple, sucked it deep and hard into his warm mouth and began to tongue it gently.

They had experimented with chilli oil once, dabbing a drop on her nipple, rubbing a little onto her clit. She still remembered the waves of burning agony piercing her, causing her to writhe and weep as unrelenting swells throbbed at her vulnerable places.

This was worse.

Something between the sting of a whip's tail and the first flush of an open-handed slap concentrated around her areola, piercing her nipple. She thrashed and moaned as much in confusion and surprise as due to the sensation. The feeling subsided as he released her and drew back.

"It's most peculiar, isn't it?" he said. "Deeply pleasurable sensations are interpreted as deeply painful. Whereas..." he brought one hand above her sensitive inner thigh, caught her eye long enough for her to realise what he was about to do, then brought it down sharply. A searing, stinging slap rang out but far from the sharp pain she expected, instead a throb of pure rapture spread across her flesh.

Her back arched, her cunt clenched and warm, liquid pleasure sparked across her inner thigh, spreading up towards her groin. She moaned deeply and gazed at him with astonishment.

"It's the topsy-turvy, upside-down world of Wonderland, Alice," he said. "The tweaked proteins in the berry extract bind with your neuroreceptors, not in the nerves but in the brain. As the effects increase the pleasure response will fade, the pain increase. More and more pain. Oh, and the reverse, of course. The effects will peak in about an hour and then return completely to normal. But until then..."

He rolled her onto one side, as far as he could with the ropes digging into her wrists - and even that felt like melting chocolate flowing up her forearms - enough to expose one buttock. He caressed it with his fingers, tiny knives stabbed at her flesh, and then began to spank her.

Insane. Impossible. Each slap like a dozen warm tongues lapping at her skin. She moaned and squealed. The pressure was there, the sharp impact but but the feeling, oh it was bewildering. As blood flushed into her buttocks, it carried the sensation of writhing, tonguing towards her groin where it tingled like pins and needles.

"It's very confusing," he admitted, licking his thumb and drawing it around her nipple gently, where it burned and seared her flesh, "like one of those carnival bicycles with the steering reversed. Your body is so accustomed to leaning left to turn left, when it happens the other way, you fall over." He pinched her nipple with cruel force and a warm, delightful ecstatic flush flowed across her chest.

She was sopping wet, now, grinding herself against the sheets fiercely in an effort to avoid the painful sensation of the soft bedding caressing her skin.

"Difficult to know what you want or need, I would imagine," he said. "You might think you want me to fuck you."

"Oh please," she moaned.

"Or would that be agony?"

Would it? The thought of his cock sliding into her now filled her with longing but what would that usual delightful pleasure feel like in this state?

"Or would it be better to spank your pussy, hard and fast?"

"Yes," she whispered, although if she thought she wanted those painful slaps, would it mean it would feel like pleasure, or would the pleasure she craved actually hurt?

His lips were right beside her ear again. He caught her face in one hand, holding it steady as he murmured: "Or just thrust right into your ass, only your own sweat as lubrication."

Her body undulated with confounded expectation at this terrifying, tantalising thought. She wondered if with the extract's effect she would actually come from this unusually cruel treatment he suggested. He released her and sat back.

"So now we have everything we need," he said. "We can begin."

Begin? What did that mea-

A baffling throbbing, burning began in her very core, like a migraine of pleasure. Worse, far worse than any spanking, than a belt across her buttocks, than chilli oil massaged into her clit it was, it was...

He had the controller in his hand. His thumb was on the button.

"I completely forgot to finish that earlier version of the myth. Do you still want to hear how it really ends?"

She found herself unable to reply in words, just groans and whimpers.

"You'll remember we left Veya chained under the Falls, Canna ever by her side, shielding her from the agony of the waters. So they are to be found, through eternity, in this terrible predicament. But..." he lay beside her, gazing into her eyes, into her confused pleasure, into her soul.

"But ...Veya was a Goddess of Wisdom and Canna a trickster God of Knowledge. And in the time they spent together, they had dedicated themselves to learning. And with their experimentation and their knowledge of mankind's sensation, they had done what none other of the Gods could do. They had found the edges of pleasure and of pain. They had learned to move between each, to transform one into the other. Pain into pleasure, pleasure into pain."

He kissed her softly at the edge of her mouth. It felt like a needle in her flesh. Then he clamped his hand around her throat, squeezing. Electric delight seared up her spine, her lungs awash with burning, orgasmic pleasure as the air faded. Her chest heaved, her lungs burned with liquid fire as she tried to draw breath.

"So now, we can contemplate their fate with fresh eyes. Poor Veya is chained, for all eternity, beneath these vast cascading waters of pleasure. Yet Canna uses his own body to shield her from them, leaving only the finest mist condensing upon her. Sometimes, when he shifts position, to tease her, a rivulet of exquisite delight trickles onto her neck, across her shoulders, down her breasts and belly and between her legs to pierce her very centre, before dripping away. And once in a blue moon, Canna relents and moves aside to plunge her whole body into the torrent of ecstasy, leaving her writhing and gasping, senseless with delight."

He relaxed his hand. The deep, shuddering breath flooded into her lungs, left them afire. Relief was relentless rapture. As she gasped, he crooned to her, praising her, while her breathing slowed and she returned to herself.

"Chained for all eternity in a cascade of pleasure, even a Goddess could become bored. But after their year and a day together, her wicked, skillful lover knew her mind and she his and, even forbidden from touching her, he knew that he could give her greater pleasure by teasing her for aeons, only occasionally immersing her in true ecstasy, taking his own pleasure in the teasing and in allowing her to writhe in ecstatic agony from time to time in profound sensation. Their understanding of love and desire had surpassed even the Gods.

"To the uninformed, and especially to the All Father who believes he is punishing them, it looks for all the world as if she is writhing in agony. But Veya and Canna know differently."

The bewildering blur of pleasure and pain between her legs flicked off like a light switch, leaving her trembling and sheened in perspiration. The controller. He was holding it up before her. He had removed his thumb.

"And now, so do you."

Slowly and deliberately, so she understood exactly what he intended, he leaned closer and placed the controller into her captive hand, fastened her fingers tight around it and pressed her own thumb down upon the button. Immediately, the disk upon her clit began its initial gentle buzzing and her hips bucked and writhed as the searing tingling flooded into her again.

"That's the third press," he said. "Remember, if you let go, it won't work again."

He gazed down at her, admiring her skin flushed red with perspiration.

"And remember, too, you promised me you would come by your own hand, tonight. If you hurry, you might be able to make it there before all the pleasure has become converted into pure pain. But the longer you take, the more difficult I think it's going to be, chasing those last scraps of sweet delight. Which will be a shame as, if you don't come, it's going to be a long time before you are allowed anything at all. Next winter, I think we agreed."

Her body began to shudder, her breathing became ragged. The agony between her legs lapped like a spreading wildfire across her buttons, down her thighs, tingling electric jolts in her belly, up her spine. Her toes began to curl.

"But of course," he said, "eventually your body is going to make you come anyway, if you keep that button pressed. It has craved release for so long, it will take care of everything for you, entirely without your intervention. You couldn't stop it if you tried."

"I suppose you only have one choice," he mused. "Keep the button pressed and endure the agony of climax, or let it go and endure the agony of a year and a day without any stimulation whatsoever."

He placed the lightest, sweetest kiss on her thigh which stung like nettles and radiated into the rest of the sensations searing through her body.

"I can't imagine how a full body orgasm is going to feel but I'm sure I'll hear it from next door."

He moved away, to the open doorway and took one look back at her. She met his gaze through heavy eyelids, her body suffused with agony, delight, buffeted by the cascading waters of her own sensation.

"Happy New Year, my beautiful instrument," he said.

The door closed with a click.