Rigorous Testing (a BPC Story)

This one's an exclusive prequel for paying subscribers only :) Thanks for being here, and I hope you enjoy!

***

“Thanks so much for coming in today,” said the technician, pulling on her latex gloves. “Has anyone explained the trial to you yet?”

“Uh, the ad said something about an experiment on… human sexuality?” said Ian, eyeing those gloves anxiously.

The tech, Leah, according to her nametag, was very pretty, and he was torn between absurd fantasies about her touching him with those gloves in various intimate ways (for science of course), and terror of any situation in which he could find a way to embarrass himself in front of her (because he would).

“Yeah, that’s the general category it falls into,” said Leah, bubbly and unfazed. “So, the procedure for this one is pretty simple and fun. I’m going to fit you with a device, totally external, don’t worry, and all you have to do is try to bring yourself to orgasm.”

Ian could feel the blood rushing to his face. How Leah could just… say a thing like that, as easily as if she were telling him to take a pill, was beyond him. She couldn’t have been that much older than he was, and he could never imagine a day when he’d be so comfortable talking about sex that he didn’t even feel the need to whisper.

Leah unrolled what looked very much like a dog’s shock collar and took a step closer to him.

“What does it do?” Ian asked, forcing his voice down when it really wanted to creep upward in pitch. “Try to distract me, or something?”

“Oh, no, this is just a monitor,” Leah laughed, buckling the collar around his neck. She unreeled one wire after another from the little box on the side, dipping the ends in some kind of paste, and sticking them to his scalp at careful intervals. “The actual test device goes lower.”

It took effort for Ian to avoid crossing his legs.

“You’ll have two hours in the testing chamber,” Leah went on. “You can use anything you find in there. If you interfere with the monitor, we’ll have to disqualify you, but other than that, you won’t be penalized for breaking anything, including the test device.”

Penalized. The word stuck in Ian’s head. Why’d she have to pick that word? Didn’t she know how much it sounded like penis? Couldn’t she have said… well, not punished, obviously. Thinking that word made his face even redder. Disciplined? No, that still wasn’t quite right.

“You still with me?” Leah asked, leaning down to get a better look at his eyes. “Everything okay?”

“Me… what?” Ian snapped himself upright. “Everything’s fine.”

Leah observed him with concern for another moment before continuing.

“Right, so, use whatever you need to in the room, I said that. If there’s anything else you think would help, just push the intercom button, and we’ll see if we can accommodate you. If you do succeed in reaching orgasm within the two-hour window, your pay will be doubled.”

“Doubled?” Ian repeated, then wished he could undo the neediness in his tone.

Leah smiled. “Yes, doubled. Practical motivation is important to the data we’re collecting.”

Of course, she already knew he needed money, without him having to give anything away. Signing up to be a medical test subject was the kind of thing you only did when you were down to choosing between your textbooks or your noodles at the campus store.

“It has to be a full orgasm, though,” Leah went on in that same matter-of-fact tone. “That’s why we have to have the sensors on you, even though you have testicles. We’re not just looking for ejaculate, we’re looking for the neurological activity that accompanies a full, pleasurable orgasm. Do you know what I’m talking about? Have you ever had an orgasm that just didn’t feel quite satisfying?”

Ian wasn’t sure he’d be able to force himself to answer. He could vividly picture himself just sitting here in silence until Leah had to go confer with her boss about what to do with him, giving him a window to sneak out the back.

Somehow, miraculously, he managed to say, “Uh, yeah, I think so…?”

“Don’t worry, it’s a totally normal phenomenon,” Leah assured him. “It’s just not what we’re testing for here. Are you ready to get started? Do you need to use the bathroom first, or maybe drink some water?”

“No, no, I’m good to go,” said Ian.

He’d made sure he was good on both those levels about five times before she’d called his name in the waiting room.

“Great, so, I’ll need you to strip from the waist down,” said Leah, passing him a thin blanket and turning around to rummage through a supply box.

Ian awkwardly pulled his jeans and boxers off over his worn sneakers and sat back down on the paper-covered table with the blanket covering his lap. It was not large enough to cover his ass at the same time.

Leah turned back toward him, pulling the plastic wrapper off of a set of metal rings.

She crouched down at the end of the table and peeked under the blanket, which really served no purpose other than to give Ian the faint illusion of still being dressed, from his angle.

Glad, for once in his life, that he tended to suffer from the opposite of “nervous erections,” Ian sucked in a breath as Leah’s gloved firmly gripped his balls.

A cuff of cold metal closed over the skin above them, and then a smaller one around the base of his cock. Others followed, each one snug in its position, down to a tiny one at the tip, held on only by its connection to the rest.

“All done!” Leah announced brightly, straightening up.

She set down a handful of rings and connective bars that were left over from the kit. Wrong sizes, perhaps.

“Go ahead,” she said, opening a door into a dimly lit space beyond the exam room. “I’ll start the clock once I close the door. If you need me, again, just push the red button on the wall and speak up.”

Holding the small blanket awkwardly around his waist, Ian hopped down from the exam table and sidled through the door, nodding and smiling at Leah for what felt like several seconds too long.

“Good luck!” she added, closing the door.

Ian’s vision adjusted slowly after the fluorescents of the exam room, but once it did, there was more than enough light to see by, emanating from sconces around the walls. There was a warmer, much less clinical quality to it.

For that matter, nothing about this room suggested that it belonged in a lab.

There was a couch with a cloth cover, easily changed but comfortable. In front of it was a TV that, with the push of a few buttons on the remote, turned out to be connected to a vast database of different types of porn.

The rest of the space was divided into two incongruous sections.

On Ian’s right, there were shelves full of solo sex toys — pocket pussies, dildoes and vibrators of all shapes and sizes, single-serving tubes of lubricants and creams for various sensations, even a few full-sized sex dolls.

On his left, there was a workbench, surrounded by what looked like half the stock of a hardware store. A fresh wave of nervousness stirred the contents of Ian’s stomach, as he remembered the directive not to worry about damaging the device.

There was nothing there, among the saws, picks, chisels, and files, that he wanted anywhere near his crotch.

That double pay, though….

Deciding to start simple, Ian grabbed one of the lube tubes, propped himself out on the couch, and scrolled through the TV options. He settled on what looked like a pretty standard naughty nurse movie. It seemed easier to lean into the weirdness of his present clinical setting than try to forget it. The fact that the woman on the promotional art bore a distant resemblance to Leah certainly didn’t hurt.

He stroked himself lightly over the rings of the device, while the movie opened and set up its story, such as it was, introducing each nurse.

Slowly, he felt his blood begin to flow into place, skin growing more sensitive under his fingers. The beginning of an erection pressed outward, digging into the rings. His cock stood up drunkenly, but could not reach its full height or strength. The bars connecting the rings to each other held the whole structure at a static length of about three inches, regardless of whether it was standing or dangling.

An unusual tingle began to fill the area, as the small amount of blood that had managed to gather found itself unable to flow back out at a normal rate.

There was enough space between the bars in the right place for Ian to reach his most sensitive spot, just under the head. He had never had an orgasm without a full erection before, but he had made himself cum by touching almost nothing except that spot. Maybe that was all that would matter.

He added some lubrication, and continued to experiment.

#

“Good luck!” the tech named Leah called out as she closed the door behind Eva.

Eva barely glanced around the test chamber. As soon as her eyes adjusted, she went straight for the couch and straddled the armrest.

The device Leah had fitted her with consisted of nothing but a metal belt and a curved piece of metal that passed between her legs. It was basically a rigid pair of brief panties with a few small holes in it.

Without even looking at the thing, she’d been able to feel from the moment it closed around her that she wouldn’t need any special tools to complete her task.

She gripped the end of the armrest and began grinding against it, just as she would against the corner of her bed at home.

As snug and immovable as the device was, it couldn’t stop her from moving inside her own skin.

She pressed her pussy to the hard metal and rocked, rubbing her clit firmly against the inside of its own hood. No other friction was required. Catching a good balance and rhythm, Eva let go of the armrest, sat upright, and reached under her bra to pinch at her nipples.

Not being able to use her hands directly on her pussy should have made this more difficult, but the thrill of knowing that it was supposed to be difficult was actually getting her closer, faster.

It was deliciously dirty, like masturbating in the supply closet at work.

She was being restricted, maybe observed, but her appetite could not be contained.

Every thrust brought her closer to defeating this dumb, useless piece of metal, and getting paid for it.

Eva pinched herself harder, pretending the pinches were coming from whoever’s crummy invention this was. She imagined them trying to stop her from cumming, trying to skew the test results with pain, not knowing that they were only turning her on.

She yowled like a cat winning a fight when she came, and then fell in a tangle against the armrest, unable to get her hands out of her bra in time to catch herself.

Almost immediately, Leah knocked on the test chamber door.

“Great work!” she chirped. “I’ll have a short survey for you when you’re ready. But first, may I put your name down for next month’s round of testing?”

#

Ian was beginning to panic, just a little.

He was trapped in this room. The more he thought about it, the more indisputable that fact became.

In theory, he knew that he could press the red button on the wall at any time and tell Leah that he wanted to back out of the test. But he would never actually do that, because it would mean not getting paid, and even more unthinkably, it would involve telling Leah that he wanted to back out of the test.

The fact that he had only just met Leah and might never see her again was irrelevant. Last year, Ian had gotten mugged, and he’d spent the next night tossing and turning, not over the memory of the knife against his back, or the hassle of replacing all his cards, but because he was pretty sure there was a burlesque ticket stub still in his wallet.

What if the thief thought it was creepy to like burlesque? Or weird, for a guy to watch burlesque in a town with perfectly good strip clubs? Or maybe both, somehow?

No, Ian was definitely going to be serving out his two hours in this room, one way or another.

His cock was getting sore from straining against its little tunnel of rings, and good sense told him his best move was to turn off the porno, calm himself down to zero, and make a new game plan.

But then, Ian had never been good at calming himself, or at listening to good sense, when his cock wasn’t functioning properly.

He would have thought the test device would make that easier, in a way. Having a concrete reason why his cock wasn’t working, and a firm timeline for when it would work again — that should have helped him accept his current condition for now. It didn’t.

Being constrained like this was like having a cramped arm that he couldn’t extend, or a tongue numbed with dental drugs. Constantly probing and testing the problem area was an irresistible compulsion, and it would stay that way until he had definitive proof that the problem was fixed.

He rubbed one of the provided vibrators frantically back and forth over that tiny, well-lubricated pleasure spot he’d been focusing on since he got here. When he focused long enough on just building that feeling, ignoring the unsettling smallness of his confined appendage and the discomfort from the bars, he could bring himself to within what felt like a hair’s breadth of orgasm. Each time, he thought it was going to work. Then he’d stall out right on the edge, unable to push himself over no matter how vigorously he went on rubbing.

The third time this happened, he shouted out loud with frustration and threw himself backward against the couch, slamming his head repeatedly into one of the cushions.

Remembering the monitoring collar, Ian’s hands flew to his scalp, making sure he hadn’t dislodged any of the little electrode sensors.

He’d been lucky. Or that paste that held the sensors in place was stronger than it looked. In any case, he resolved not to test it again. He rested his head back more gently, let it fall to the side. The workshop table filled his field of vision.

#

When Eva returned on her second month, the device she was placed in was much the same as the first, with the addition of a large metal probe that fit in her vagina. The probe was hollow, with a smooth, rounded opening on either end, and a silicone plug that fit into the bottom one.

Once again, as soon as the door to the test chamber closed, she climbed onto the armrest and started to grind.

If someone thought the probe would make this more difficult, they were sorely mistaken.

It did anchor her vagina in place, reducing her range of movement inside the device, which she guessed was probably the intent. What it took away in the length of her strokes, however, it gave back twice with pressure on her G region.

She felt even dirtier than the first time around, and even hotter, being penetrated by this thing that was obviously supposed to cover up her fun nerves, and using it as a toy instead.

That double pay was going to be hers in record time.

#

Ian eased a heavily lubricated flathead screwdriver under one of the bars that connected the last two rings of his device.

He wasn’t much of an engineer, but he didn’t think he needed to be, in order to recognize the bars’ thin connective hooks as the device’s most likely weak spot. He sucked in a breath and twisted the screwdriver, using it as a lever.

The pressure intensified on the head of his cock. He closed his eyes, failing to block out a mental image of the rings collapsing and crushing him.

Pop.

Something gave, the screwdriver came loose from the device, and Ian looked down. With a laugh of relief, he examined the bent metal bar. One of its hooks was stretched open and no longer attached to anything. Without that bar, the smallest ring at the end of the device had fallen open like the cap of a sports water bottle.

As he watched, his cock extended itself, pushing past the breached end of the device. Still restricted in width, but not in length, his erection swelled rapidly, surpassing its usual top size. The head and section of shaft that were fully outside the device hardened, throbbed, and began to take on an angry red tint.

Ian had the vague notion that this new kind of pressure couldn’t be safe for very long, but for now, it felt a lot better than the pressure that had come before.

He wrapped his hand around his engorged, fully accessible head and sat back on the couch to watch the nurse who sort of looked like Leah sucking on a similarly oversized appendage.

There was no need to find out what would happen if he spent the rest of the two hours in this condition. Before the next scene change, he had ejaculated a thick, white puddle all over the test chamber door.

“Great work!” came Leah’s voice.

The relief was so intense, it took Ian a full three seconds to remember to be embarrassed.

#

Eva’s next challenge was unassuming to look at.

Most of it looked like a G-string made of thin steel cable. The crotch was a curved, triangular plate, with a mesh grating on the outside, and an unfriendly-looking bed of spikes on the inside. The spikes were longer closer to the front, and they scaled down to a flat surface farther back, leaving her just enough room to sit upright without impaling herself.

“Good luck!”

The door closed.

Eva approached the couch more cautiously today. She straddled the armrest again, experimentally, and shifted her weight very slightly.

Nope, no good.

Eva sprang to her feet, yanking on the spiked crotch plate. There was almost no give at all, only enough for her to make sure her skin wasn’t sticking to that forest of vicious little points.

Okay, this one was going to take a little more effort. She went over to the work bench and selected a set of bolt cutters.

It took a lot of fiddling, just trying to slip one of the blades under the steel cable at her hip without tightening the spikes into herself in the process. Finally, she managed to wrangle the tool into a decent position to close the handles.

They wouldn’t close completely.

This tool, designed to give a strong enough mechanical advantage to defeat a link of chain the thickness of her thumb, stopped dead when it closed on this shoelace-sized strand of what looked like steel cable.

Eva wasn’t in the best position to put a lot of muscle into the task, so she braced one handle of the tool against a corner of the room, and then used her full weight to push the other handle to meet it.

She threw herself against it two, three times, then backed up to examine the results.

The strand of metal was perfectly intact. The blades of the bolt cutters had several nicks in them, exactly the diameter of the strand.

A weight settled onto Eva’s chest, and protesting moisture rushed to her pussy, as she recognized the actual possibility that she might not beat this one.

She wasn’t ready to admit defeat just yet, though.

Abandoning the work bench, she began surveying the toy collection instead.

#

On Ian’s second appointment, Leah had to spend quite a bit of extra time prodding and measuring him before fitting him with the new version of his device.

Once it was on, he could see why. Instead of mix and match rings of various sizes, this one was all a single piece of metal, completely covering his cock except for a few narrow vents. It fastened onto him with a bar behind his scrotum.

When the door of the test chamber closed behind him, he took the same seat as before, turned on the next movie in the same naughty nurse series he’d started before, and began probing the device for weaknesses. There was no likely place to stick a screwdriver, and no gaps big enough to touch his cock with it on.

He explored the locking bar at the back, stroking his balls along the way.

One of the nurses on the TV leaned over a patient’s bed, showing off the absence of panties under her short uniform, and Ian was able to coax himself into the beginnings of an erection.

From the outside, no one would have known that anything had changed. Unlike the rings and bars that could move with him and stand on end, this device restricted his cock completely to a single size and shape. It strained against its enforced downward curve and tingled with the familiar beginnings of something good, but could not advance past that earliest step.

Ian focused on the locking bar itself. That had to be the weakness.

He selected a file from the workbench and inserted it very carefully under the hinge of the bar. Gathering the loose skin of his scrotum to the other side with one hand, he rubbed the file back and forth against the metal.

Judging by the grinding sound, it seemed like he must be making progress.

He picked up the pace, generating as much friction as possible, feeling a slight warmth seep into the bar, independent of his body heat.

What started out promising soon turned into a slog. Ian’s wrist cramped, and sweat gathered under his shirt and in his hair. He hoped it wouldn’t interfere with the sensors.

When he needed to stop to wipe his forehead, he pulled the file out and ran a finger along the bar again.

It was smooth and even in width. If he’d been flexible enough to put his head between his legs and look at the whole thing, he doubted he’d find a scratch on it.

He tossed the file across the room and dropped himself onto the couch to breathe.

The exertion had distracted him enough to make his arousal fade. The metal tube around his cock felt almost loose compared with earlier.

He surprised himself, thinking of the word “loose” as a description for this thing.

Certain that it couldn’t be that simple, he grabbed the tube and tested how it would feel to pull out of it.

Okay, it wasn’t exactly simple. The motion pinched his scrotum painfully, but as long as he kept his mind blank and unexcited, there was movement.

Biting down hard on his tongue, he pulled the device outward as far as he could bear it, and managed to snake his little finger underneath, touching the base of his shaft.

Think soft thoughts, he warned himself, as he bent and dragged his cock out through the narrow gap between the device and his pelvis.

It was a tight pinch, but then he was free, more or less. There was still some pressure on his balls, but nothing to stop him from stroking the full length of his liberated cock.

It hardened quickly in his hand, ready to take advantage of the opportunity.

When he knelt in front of the TV, aiming considerately at an easily mopped stretch of floor, he wondered if Leah was watching his brain scan on a monitor somewhere, already preparing to tell him, “Good work!”

He was looking forward to hearing it.

#

Eva lay on her back on the couch, with the gentlest butterfly vibrator she could find arranged on top of the spikey test device.

When she didn’t have her own weight on the spikes, they weren’t so terrible. There were enough of them set close enough together that they could distribute the slight weight of the vibrator nicely, without digging into her in any one particular place.

She couldn’t rub the area, the way she normally would while masturbating face-up, but the spikes resting softly against her pussy were vibrating along with the toy. They had become a swarm of tingling bites of fragile pleasure on her skin.

There was absolutely nothing she could do to speed the process. Through trial and error, she had already found the best toy, the best position. Any change would only be an interruption.

It was the slowest, most tortuous build to orgasm she had ever attempted, but it was building.

#

In retrospect, Ian supposed the weakness he’d exploited last month’s device was one of the easier ones to correct.

The one he was fitted with on his third appointment had some added steel cables encircling his waist and hips, in addition to the scrotum bar. Put together, they held the device flush to his pelvis no matter how he tugged on it.

The actual tube around his cock looked to be a combination of the previous two. It was made up of thick wires with some breathing room in between, but it was all welded into a solid shape with a fixed downward curve, no flexibility, no connective pieces that could be forced apart.

He reached down to test the openings along the underside of his head. The wires were set closer there, making it impossible to touch his sensitive spot with even one fingertip.

The workbench had all the same tools as before, and Ian turned each one over in his hands, searching for one he could imagine making the difference this month.

#

Eva struggled to keep her pelvis still under the light, prickling touch of the device-vibrator combo. Her legs twitched and kicked against the far armrest of the couch.

She pinched savagely at her nipples, applying force in the one way she still could, while watching one woman tease another with a feather on the TV.

This was it, here it came. Eva grabbed her breasts harder to restrain herself from reaching down to give herself just a tiny bit more pressure. The orgasm broke over her, feeling strangely shallow, but also endless. It sent out another tingling pulse across her skin each time she thought it must be over.

Instead of a shout of triumph, she found herself breathing softly through this one, vision turning a sparkling pink, wetness spreading across her face before she realized she’d been crying.

“Good work!” the confirmation came over the intercom, while the extended pulses were still in progress. “That was a close one!”

#

Ian examined one of the thinner vibrators, skeptically.

The helpful label included with it said that it was good for prostate stimulation. Ian had never done anything anal before. Well, nothing more than a few seconds of curious experimentation with his own finger. He’d read about prostate orgasms, though, and after mentally re-configuring his entire budget for the month while jabbing himself with useless tools from the workbench, he was ready to try almost anything.

His ass was completely unrestricted by the test device.

Slowly, methodically, he mounted the vibrator securely in the workbench’s vice, so that it was sticking out parallel to the floor. Once he was satisfied that it wasn’t going anywhere, he loaded it down with an entire travel bottle of lube, and turned it on.

The hum it made was so light at soothing, it didn’t seem like it could possibly produce that powerful a sensation.

Still taking his time, telling himself that he wasn’t stalling, Ian climbed onto the workbench chair, sat up on his knees with his ass facing the vice, and pressed himself back toward the waiting vibrator.

That first moment of contact, just the tip of the vibrator against his hole, confirmed that its power was not to be underestimated. A charge ran through him, ticklish and hungry, like minutes of arousal concentrated into less than a second.

His cock strained against its cage.

Emboldened, Ian pushed himself back harder, then jerked away from a surprisingly sharp, stretching pain. He clutched the back of the chair, psyching himself up with hard, conscious breaths.

It was just like ripping that first cage open, he told himself. Hold your breath, gut through it, hope that your body’s still there on the other side.

Ian did just that, forcing himself back onto the bulbous massage head of the vibrator.

The pain was about the same the second time, but it started to fade once he got the head deep enough. His body was, indeed, still here. All in one piece, even.

That ticklish, hungry charge he felt from the vibration remained, reaching deeper into him, just as he’d hoped it would.

He felt almost impossibly turned on, considering that he didn’t, and couldn’t, have a proper erection. The urge to thrust forward at something was as pointless as it was intense, so he focused on thrusting backward, fucking himself with the vibrator.

With some trial and error, he was able to identify the spot that reacted best to the impact of the vibrator’s head, and he dialed in his aim to hit it over and over again. It wasn’t the same as rubbing the head of his cock, but it did feel as if he was building toward something.

The feeling filled more of his body than his usual leadup, making his knees feel unsteady under him. Lightheaded, panting, floating in a cloud of intangible energy, he stayed the course, thrusting himself onto the vibrator, letting the process inside him play itself out.

Something clenched, somewhere deep below his navel. Ian reached instinctively for his cock, suddenly ten times as desperate for contact, but could only hold the unfeeling outside of the cage.

The clench released, and the urge to touch himself dissipated along with it. He pulled away from the vibrator completely, suddenly sensitive and aware of the lingering pain in his ass.

“No,” Ian muttered, looking down at the slow drip of semen spilling out of end of the cage and oozing down the back of the workbench chair. “Come on, no!”

This was the aftermath of an orgasm, minus the good parts. All the weak, fragile feelings, none of the euphoria, no catharsis.

No “great work!” from Leah over the intercom, either.

After a long moment to catch his breath, and come to terms, Ian stumbled out of the chair and went to push the intercom button himself.

“Ready to call it?” Leah asked sympathetically.

“Did you…” Ian tried to ask. “Did you notice, uh….”

“Mm-hmm,” Leah answered. “You’re welcome to keep trying, but given average recharge time and how long you have left, I can chalk this up as a completed session with a negative result if you want to wrap up early.”

#

The fourth iteration of Eva’s device was the one that broke her.

It had no spikes, only a domed front panel that swept subtly outward from her pelvis. She could play with the vibrators or grind against the couch to her heart’s content with no pain, but with no effect either. No stimulation could cross the fortified empty space around her clit.

This one had a different set of cables, equally indestructible but styled more like chains, in a different configuration that made it easier to access her ass. She spent most of her test period experimenting with dildoes there, but just as she would have predicted before the test began, they could only make her hornier, never take her over the edge.

By the time Leah called an end to the test, Eva was sweating, sore, and sensitive, and almost as anxious to get the device removed as she was to collect the partial payment she was still owed.

Would it be too obvious, if she asked for a couple minutes of privacy once she had her pussy back? Of course it would, but she was seriously considering asking anyway.

Leah did not arrive to release her as she normally did. Instead, she directed Eva over the intercom to put her pants back on and proceed through the lobby to a numbered room she’d never entered before.

The last thing Eva felt like doing was putting more clothes on over the device, but she complied, not wanting to delay whatever last business needed to be handled before she was free.

When she arrived in the room, Leah was already there, waiting at a small conference table. She motioned Eva to take a seat next to young man about her age, who looked about as uncomfortable in his jeans as she felt, by the way he was fidgeting.

He looked at her and started to wave, but then ran his fingers through his hair and pinned his hands under his arms, as if he’d decided that letting her see his palm had been a faux pas.

“Ian. Eva. I hope you don’t mind me bringing you in together,” said Leah, picking up her tablet. “You both had a negative result on today’s test, so it’s quicker if I just run over your options once instead of twice.”

“Our options?” Ian asked, with a strained smile.

“That’s right,” Leah continued easily. “We needed you to believe that completing your task was the best way to maximize your compensation, so you’d have the necessary motivation during testing. Now that you’ve failed the task, however, I’m allowed to offer you an option to triple your base pay.”

“Triple?” Eva and Ian asked at once.

She couldn’t keep the interest out of her voice. Neither of them could.

“Yes,” said Leah. “We’re in the process of testing the long-term as well as short-term effects of the devices you’re currently wearing. If you agree to leave them on and return here for regular examination, we can offer triple pay for each week of participation. That’s roughly twelve times what you would have been earning on a monthly basis.”

Eva bit her lip. For that much, she could avoid taking any other summer jobs. She’d have plenty of time to rest up and study ahead… and also plenty of time to spend alone with the desperate ache between her legs.

“Any chance we could get a quick break before starting this week?” she asked.

Ian retreated deeper into his crossed-limb posture, looking shocked that she’d even asked such a question, but maybe glad that she had as well.

“I’m afraid not,” said Leah, with a kind smile. “There’s no obligation, of course. I can remove the devices and get you your checks now, if you prefer.”

Eva sighed heavily, nodded, and stopped waiting for the choices to be different than what they were.

“I’m in,” she said.

“I… yeah,” said Ian. “I guess… that’s what’s happening, then.”

“Great!” said Leah. “I’ll just need each of you to sign this.”

She turned the tablet toward them.

Ian took his time reading through the form. Eva skimmed it.

“Just curious,” said Eva, pushing the tablet back toward Leah. “What’s this trial going to be used for?”

“No idea,” said Leah. “Above my paygrade. I’ll see you both next week!”