Chapter 17: The Group Interrogation
The door to Conference Room C felt heavier than usual. Aidan pushed it open, and the hum of the air conditioning hit him first, a sterile chill that smelled of lemon polish and old coffee. Then he saw them.
They were arranged around the polished oak table like a tribunal. Lena at the head, her wild curls framing a face that was all sharp angles and focused intensity. Priya to her right, scrolling through a tablet, her expression neutral. Cho and Catriona sat together, their postures a study in contrast—Cho small and coiled tight, Catriona leaning back with bored curiosity. And Sasha. On Lena’s left. She didn’t look up from her notebook, her pen moving in precise, tiny circles.
“Variable A. Perfect timing.” Lena’s voice was a smooth alto, devoid of its usual playful smirk. “Close the door. Take your position at the front, please.”
Aidan’s feet carried him forward on autopilot. The floor-to-ceiling windows offered a dizzying view of the city, making him feel simultaneously enormous and insignificant. He stopped near the humming whiteboard, where someone had written ‘PHASE THREE: EMOTIONAL PARAMETERS’ in clean, dry-erase letters.
“The integrity of our data is compromised,” Lena began, steepling her fingers. “Private, unsupervised interactions introduce bias. Contagion. We’re here today for a corrective. A meta-analysis.”
Priya finally looked up. Her dark eyes met Aidan’s for a split second, then flicked away. There was no warmth there, just assessment.
“Aidan, you’ll serve as our visual reference point. Standard protocol. You know the drill.”
His throat was dry. He knew the drill. For technical sessions—measurements, angles, stamina tests—they often had him strip to his boxers. It was clinical. This felt like a dissection. He pulled his henley over his head, the fabric catching on his ears. He toe-kicked his sneakers off, unbuttoned his jeans, and let them pool at his feet. He stepped out of them, standing in the cold room in just his grey boxer briefs. The faint outline of his cock was already visible, a response to the sheer tension in the room, to the five pairs of eyes on him. He felt his face grow hot.
“Good.” Lena leaned forward. “We begin with self-reporting. We’re going to deconstruct the emotional variable introduced by Subject A’s… interventions. One by one. You will describe, with as much clinical precision as you can muster, how he made you feel. Not just physically. Emotionally. The shame, the surprise, the submission, the empowerment. We’re mapping the psychological footprint.”
She turned first to Priya. “Junior Writer Sharma. Your specialty is creampies. A act of profound… intimacy, some would say. Describe the emotional dissonance of your research with Variable A. The gap between your professional intention and your physiological response.”
Priya put her tablet down. She kept her gaze on Lena, as if Aidan were a piece of equipment on the wall. Her voice was calm, methodical.
“The initial parameters were about capacity and aftermath. The practicalities. The emotional variable manifested as a lapse in professional identity.” She paused, choosing her words. “There’s a specific moment of… vulnerability. When he finishes inside. The research subject becomes a giver. The researcher becomes a receptacle. My expertise is in the technical analysis of that event. But the emotion it triggers is a form of hollowing out. A quietness. It feels less like being dominated and more like being… claimed. It’s professionally inconvenient. It requires an additional twenty minutes of recalibration in the shower afterwards to reassert cognitive boundaries.”
Lena scribbled a note. “Hollowing out. Interesting. A perceived loss of authority.”
“A temporary one,” Priya corrected, but her jaw was tight.
“Intern Park.” Lena’s eyes shifted to Cho. “Oral worship. Your struggle is physical, documented. But what is the emotional texture of that struggle? The shame of insufficiency, or the pride in the endeavor?”
Cho’s petite frame seemed to shrink further into her chair. She blinked rapidly, her gaze darting to Aidan’s torso, then to his feet, anywhere but his face or his groin. Her voice was so small it was almost absorbed by the hum of the lights.
“It is… frustrating. And addicting.” She swallowed. “My mouth… fails. Every time. It is not designed for that variable. But the failure is not… bad. The trying is the point. The emotion is… a focused desperation. To be good enough to take it. To not be good enough. They happen together. It is… embarrassing. To want something that hurts. To ask for it again.”
Catriona let out a soft, sighing sound, almost a laugh. Lena shot her a look that silenced her.
“Intern MacLeod. You’re next.” Lena’s tone was dry. “Your preference for scenarios of domination is well documented. Break down the emotional payload. Is it about power exchange, or is it simpler? A preference for being overwhelmed by a superior physical variable?”
Catriona didn’t hesitate. She looked directly at Aidan, a slow smile spreading across her face. “It’s not complicated. It’s chemical. See him standing there? All that… potential. The emotion is anticipation. It’s a shortcut. He’s bigger, stronger. I get to stop thinking. The research is just the permission slip. The feeling is… relief. And it’s fucking delicious.”
Lena made another note, her mouth a thin line. Then she turned. The room held its breath.
“Junior Writer Cole.”
Sasha’s pen stopped circling. She lifted her head. Her expression was a masterpiece of neutral professionalism, but Aidan could see the pulse hammering in her neck.
“Your published thesis is on the insufficiency of the white male partner in satisfying the Black female partner. Yet, our data shows you are consistently, and multiple times per session, satisfied by this specific white male variable. Describe the emotional conflict. The cognitive dissonance between your published expertise and your bodily truth.”
The question hung in the air, cruel and exact. Sasha placed her pen down on the notebook, lining it up perfectly with the edge. She finally looked at Aidan. Her eyes were dark, unreadable pools. Not the eyes from the shower. These were the ones from her byline photo.
“The conflict is…” she began, then cleared her throat. “The conflict is a recurring malfunction in the hypothesis. The physical variable is an outlier. It doesn’t disprove the rule, but it… breaks the testing equipment. Emotionally, the first response is anger. Then embarrassment.”
“Be specific,” Lena pressed, her voice a soft scalpel.
Sasha’s composure cracked, just a hair. A flush crept up her chest. “The specific embarrassment is the immediate orgasm. Upon penetration. Before any technique is applied. It’s a system override. It turns a complex interaction into a simple cause and effect. He exists, therefore I come. It renders my expertise… theoretical. The subsequent orgasms are just the system failing to reboot. Emotionally, it feels like being betrayed by my own body. For a fucking white boy with a… with a geological feature in his pants.”
She spat the last words. The room was silent. Aidan felt them like physical blows.
Lena leaned back, a slow, cold smile finally touching her lips. “Excellent. Betrayal by the corpus. A powerful emotional variable.” She turned her head, now looking directly at Aidan. Her gaze traveled down his body, lingering on the strained fabric of his boxers. “Now. Variable A. Your turn. You’ve heard their emotional data. Their shame, their anger, their relief. While in this state of heightened… exposure… describe for us the emotional impact of being the instrument of these reactions. Do you feel powerful? Or used?”
All eyes were on him. Sasha’s were like flint. His heart pounded against his ribs. He was hard now, painfully so, a purely physical rebellion against the humiliation. He saw Sasha’s eyes flicker down, then back to his face, her lips parting just a fraction.
He opened his mouth. The words, when they came, were rough, unvarnished.
“I feel… like a specimen. You just put me in a jar. And you’re all watching to see if I’ll dissolve.” He swallowed. “And I feel guilty. For causing the embarrassment. For being the… geological feature.”
Lena’s smile didn’t waver. She stood up, walking around the table until she was standing just a few feet in front of him. She looked up at him, her perfume—something with oud and pepper—wrapping around him.
“Good,” she whispered, for him alone. “Guilt is useful. It’s a binding agent.” She raised her voice, addressing the room. “Phase Three commences now. The emotional variable is officially integrated. Future sessions will pair physical protocols with targeted psychological priming. We will exploit this guilt. This shame. This anger. We will measure how it alters physical response, endurance, and climax intensity.”
She finally looked away from Aidan, back to her team. “Dismissed. Except for you, Sasha. Stay. We need to discuss your methodology for the next calibration. It involves a re-creation of last night’s private session. Here. With observers.”
Sasha’s chair scraped the floor. Aidan saw her hand tremble on the tabletop. He couldn’t move. He was still standing at the front of the room, exposed, as the others gathered their things and filed out, not one of them meeting his eyes. The door hissed shut behind Catriona, leaving him alone with Lena, and with Sasha, who wouldn’t look at him at all.