Chapter 28: The Next Query
The next morning, Studio B smelled of citrus disinfectant and unresolved tension. Aidan arrived to find Lena already there, her wild curls tucked behind her ears as she studied her tablet. Sasha was conspicuously absent. Cho and Catriona sat at the far end of the table, sipping matching green smoothies. Priya, the junior writer specializing in creampies, leaned against the window, her expression unreadable.
“Good, you’re here,” Lena said without looking up. “We’re pivoting. The reader feedback on the anal piece is already flooding in. But the next question is a psychological one.” She finally met his eyes. “It’s about sustainable arousal in a partner who is, for lack of a better term, a service provider.”
Aidan blinked. “A service provider?”
“When the focus is entirely on one person’s pleasure, how does the other person stay engaged? Physically and mentally.” Lena gestured to the bench. “Today, you’re the tool. The means to an end. Your arousal is a variable, not the goal. We’re studying the wear and tear, so to speak.”
Priya pushed off the window. “So we just… use him? For as long as we want?”
“Within the session timeframe, yes. We’ll rotate. I want to see how his body responds to prolonged, varied stimulation where he is not an active participant. His task is to not finish until the final segment. The goal is endurance of sensation, not pursuit of climax.”
A strange coldness settled in Aidan’s stomach. The other experiments had been collaborative, even when clinical. This felt different. He was to be furniture.
“Catriona, you’re first,” Lena announced. “Your documented interest is in dominance scenarios. For this, you are in control. His body is available to you. Use it to explore what sustains your arousal when the partner is passive.”
Catriona’s eyes lit up with a terrifyingly focused glee. She put her smoothie down neatly. “Okay.”
Aidan sat on the bench as instructed, his back against the cool leather. Catriona approached, not with Sasha’s defiant tension or Cho’s analytical grace, but with the quiet assurance of someone opening a gift. She didn’t bother with preamble. She hiked her skirt, positioned herself over him, and guided him inside with a practiced, deliberate push.
The fit was snug, but she was ready, wet and warm. She let out a soft sigh of satisfaction, as if settling into a favorite chair. Then she began to move.
Her rhythm was selfish. Not frantic, but deeply self-absorbed. She rode him with a focused, rolling motion of her hips, her eyes closed, her head tilted back. She wasn’t looking at him, wasn’t seeking a connection. She was chasing a feeling within her own body, and he was the necessary implement. Aidan felt himself hardening further, a purely physiological response to the warm, gripping pressure. But mentally, he felt distant, observing the ceiling panels, the hum of the LED lights.
“Describe your mental process, Catriona,” Lena said softly, circling them with her tablet.
“It’s… freeing,” Catriona murmured, her breath catching on an upstroke. “No performance. No worry about what he’s thinking. It’s just my… my rhythm. My depth. I can go as slow or as fast as I want. The arousal is… it’s all internal. It builds because I’m just thinking about my own clit, my own walls. He’s just… there. A really good there.”
She came about seven minutes in, with a series of sharp, shuddering gasps, her body clamping down hard. She stayed seated on him, panting, milking the last pulses of her orgasm before dismounting with a wet, final sound. She smoothed her skirt, gave Aidan a polite, distant smile that didn’t reach her eyes, and returned to her smoothie.
“Noted. Arousal sustained through elimination of partner-focused anxiety and focus on internal sensation,” Lena said. “Aidan, report?”
“It was… fine. I’m… still here.” He felt oddly numb.
“Good. Cho, you’re next. Your expertise is positional. Use him to explore physically challenging scenarios that prioritize your anatomical pleasure.”
Cho stood, her small frame moving with a ballet dancer’s precision. She approached him not with Catriona’s possessiveness, but like a puzzler approaching a new lock. “Can I move the bench?” she asked.
With Lena’s help, they shifted it away from the wall. Cho then proceeded to arrange Aidan’s limbs, bending his knees, placing his hands on his thighs. “You are anchor point. Do not move.”
Then, with astonishing strength and flexibility, she turned her back to him, bent at the waist, and lowered herself onto him in a deep, controlled squat. The angle was severe, the penetration breathtakingly deep. She braced her hands on her ankles, her face toward the floor.
“Oh, wow,” she breathed, the clinical tone evaporating. “The cervical contact is direct. Constant. Full.” She began to rock, using the powerful muscles of her thighs and core to lift and lower herself mere inches. Each movement was a tiny, intense adjustment. She wasn’t riding; she was fine-tuning.
Aidan gritted his teeth. This was different. The sensation was sharper, more concentrated. The visual of her compact body contorted around him, the sheer athleticism of it, was incredibly stimulating. His passivity became a form of concentration. He had to hold perfectly still as she worked herself on him, her breaths becoming shallow pants.
“The challenge… the burn in my thighs… it feeds the arousal,” she gasped out, answering Lena’s unasked question. “It’s… mindful. Each micro-adjustment changes the sensation. I’m not just feeling him; I’m feeling every muscle in my pelvis engage differently.”
She climaxed not with a cry, but with a profound, full-body tremble that she held in a perfect, quivering stillness for a long ten seconds before collapsing forward onto the floor and slipping off him. She lay there for a moment, catching her breath, then gave a thumbs-up from the ground.
“Aidan?” Lena asked.
“More… intense,” he admitted, his voice tight. The physical strain of remaining inert while she moved so precisely had been its own strange turn-on. He was painfully hard.
“Excellent contrast. Priya, you’re last.”
Priya had been silent the whole time. She walked over, her movements deliberate. She looked at Aidan, and for the first time, he saw a crack in her professional armor. It wasn’t defiance or curiosity. It was a deep, flinching embarrassment.
“My specialty is creampies,” she said, as if confessing a weakness. “The… the surrender of it. The intimacy of the finish. But how do you stay aroused for the long middle part before that?” She didn’t wait for an answer. She climbed onto him, sinking down with a ease that spoke of experience, her body accepting his girth with a faint, wet sigh.
She began to move, a smooth, grinding roll of her hips. But her eyes were locked on his, and in them, Aidan saw a profound conflict. With each motion, a flicker of shame, then a wash of helpless pleasure. She was trying to use him, to see him as an object, but her own nature fought against it.
“I can’t…” she whispered, breaking their gaze, her forehead dropping to his shoulder. Her rhythm stuttered. “It’s the submission that arouses me. Knowing he… you… will finish inside. But if you’re just a thing…” Her voice hitched. “It doesn’t work. I need to feel… owned. To make it good for you. Even if you’re not moving.”
Her arousal, he realized, was symbiotic. It required a feedback loop, a perceived transfer of power. His passivity was killing it. She moved faster, trying to force the feeling, but her movements became desperate, unhappy.
“Stop,” Lena said gently. “It’s okay. The data is clear. For some, arousal is intrinsically linked to partner response, even a passive one. The potential for his climax, the symbolism of it, is the catalyst.”
Priya went still, buried on him. A hot tear hit Aidan’s collarbone. She pushed herself up and off, turning away quickly to compose herself.
The room was quiet. Aidan sat on the bench, used, achingly full, and utterly confused by the map of pleasure etched into his skin by three different cartographers.
Lena studied her notes, then looked at him. “So? What did you learn about your own arousal?”
Aidan thought about Catriona’s selfish rhythm, Cho’s intense calibration, Priya’s frustrated need. “It’s… reactive. It follows. It needs something to hook onto. A sound, a look, a twitch. When there’s nothing, it just… idles. A high, uncomfortable idle.”
Lena nodded, tapping her screen. “Valuable. The service provider’s arousal is often parasitical. It needs the host’s visible pleasure to thrive.” She glanced at the clock. “We’re out of time. Sasha’s doing a remote edit on the anal piece. She sends her… regards.”
The dismissal was clear. As the women gathered their things, Aidan was left sitting on the bench, feeling like a well-operated piece of machinery that had just been powered down, its purpose fulfilled but its internal state fundamentally altered. The echo of their varied needs still thrummed in the air around him, a silent questionnaire he hadn’t known how to answer.