Pasco massaged her forehead with his thumb and then pressed her gently back. Ada reluctantly let his shaft all the way out of her mouth, kissing his tip before settling back to the edge of the rock between his knees.

He sat up straight and looked closely at the locket again, then looked to Ada.

She nodded, as nervous and eager as him to see what happened.

He opened the locket.

A soft note rang out of it, filling the air around them, and it became a gentle melody. “I can hear it,” Pasco said, “So that’s at least helpful. How do you feel?”

“About the same, which is to say, good.”

Pasco dipped his hand into the jar of aloe and then wrapped his hand around his shaft, stroking gently. His eyes fluttered shut for just a moment. “How about now?”

The song accelerated in tempo, the melody becoming more complex. “About the same as whenever you touch yourself in front of me, which is to say, really fucking turned on.”

Pasco laughed and then sighed happily as he stroked himself. “There’s a couple of different ways that this could work. It could sync your level of arousal with mine, though that seems a bit overly limiting and not quite what you experienced with the siren. It could cap your arousal at wherever mine’s at, or it could let you be anywhere at all except you can’t come until I do.”

Ada considered the options. “Well, the quickest way to prove definitively which it is would be for me to see if I can work myself to the edge while you’re still warming up. If I can do that, we know it’s the last one.”

Pasco grinned devilishly. “I think that’s a great idea.”

Ada realized what she’d just done. Oh no. “I take it back. It’s a terrible idea. I don’t want that at all.”

Pasco’s smile didn’t waver. He was becoming more confident as he grew accustomed to Ada’s playful protests. “Really? Then why are your eyes so dilated? And why aren’t you saying your word? And why are you already touching yourself?”

Was she? Ada looked down. She totally was. Her hand, unbidden, had slipped below the water and was pressed against her vulva. Ada whimpered. “Because.”

“Because you’re a dirty little liar?”

Ada gasped, surprised by the wave of arousal. She never would have expected a few little words to have such an overwhelming effect.

“Do you like it when I talk to you like that?” Pasco crooned.

Ada’s face flushed bright red. She nodded.

“What if I call you a needy little slut?”

Ada gasped again, her chin sliding down to rest on the rock, her eyes turned pleadingly up at Pasco. She thought she might slide off the rock and drown in the most wonderful way possible.

Was it the siren’s magic? Or was it just Pasco? She’d have to ask him later — or, even better, goad him into talking to her like that again.

“Be a good little dragon,” Pasco said, “And come up here on this rock and masturbate yourself to orgasm.”

Ada squeaked. “Yes, sir!”

“Yes, Captain.”

Ada nodded emphatically. “Yes, Captain.”

She hauled herself out of the water and onto the warm rock next to Pasco, lying on her back and looking up at him. He picked up the pot with his free hand, his other still stroking himself, and poured some aloe over Ada’s hips and vulva. 

She shivered and gasped, the aloe cold after the warmth of the water. The shock added to her arousal and her hand was over her labia and swirling in the slippery fluid before she even consciously thought to do so.

Pasco kept stroking himself, cool and calm, as he looked down over her.

She thought she might melt into that warm rock forever.

Pasco cleared his throat. “I believe, my little dragon, that I told you to fuck yourself silly.”

Ada gasped and accelerated her pace and she felt herself collapsing into mindless urgency.

A few glorious minutes passed and she started to tip towards climax.

And then stopped. She shuddered, and then the sensation faded back to pre-orgasmic.

Her eyes flashed open and she saw Pasco leaning over her, still looking smug, still stroking himself slowly, luxuriously, without a hint of hurry.

Ada gulped.

“Ooooh,” Pasco said, “I felt that one.”

“Please let me come!” Ada gasped. “I’m so close…”

“And I have so very far to go,” Pasco crooned.

“Why are you doing this to me…”

“You did this to yourself, remember? This experiment was your idea. And it was very clever. We did indeed prove that the only thing it does is stop you from coming before I do.”

Ada huffed and pouted, and then she listened for the song. It was still as it had been a few minutes prior. A bit louder, the melody a bit more insistent, but it was still overall smooth and sensual. It was the sort of song that you might drink a glass of wine and then relax back to simply listen, to experience. To bask and savor…

And that was exactly what Pasco was doing to her! He was buzzed on arousal, just sitting back and relaxing and enjoying the music and her moans.

It wasn’t fair! Here she was, pleading and begging and desperate, and he was just enjoying himself. Drawing it out. She loved it. She hated it. Hating it turned her on even more.

“Pasco, I can’t handle this, I’m gonna die…”

Pasco chuckled. “Dramatic, much? If you want it to end so badly, why don’t you just come take the necklace? You were so eager to before.”

Ada huffed. One of her hands was curled up into her vagina, the other rubbing circles around her vulva. Even though she knew she would get no release like this, she couldn’t bear to stop.

“No?” Pasco said. “You must be fine, then.”

“I’m nooot!” Ada whined. “I j-just, I…”

“You just what?” Pasco teased.

“I j-just, I can’t!” Desperation and hot arousal swelled within her.

“Nothing is stopping you.” Pasco pulled his legs up under him, coming closer to Ada and leaning over her, so that the locket dangled teasingly over her chest. “Just reach up and take it.”

“I can’t!”

“I don’t see anything in your way. No ropes… nothing on top of you…”

Ada’s chest heaved, her breasts bouncing. “You know I can’t!”

“I don’t know at all,” Pasco said. “You’ll have to tell me. Then maybe I’ll consider your excuse.”

“I c-can’t s-stop touching myself,” Ada said. “It f-feels too good.”

“Ooooh, I see. So what I’m hearing is that you could just reach up and take it, if you weren’t…” He paused.

Ada hung on his words. She rubbed herself desperately. Oh no, what was he going to say?”

“…such a thirsty… greedy… drooling… little slut.”

Ada’s body surged towards climax again, shaking, the pleasure there but the release staying ever out of reach, just as Pasco had kept the locket out of her reach before. 

The song, like Pasco, was gentle yet immovable. He denied her again.

As the sensation of the edge faded again, Ada heard the song quicken, the melody more jovial, more urgent, and within her frustration was a spark of hope.

Pasco had stayed kneeling over her, the necklace still dangling tantalizingly in front of her. All she had to do was reach up and close it, and the song would end, and she would come.

But she could not tear her hands away from herself because she really did not want to. Just as she liked the feeling of pulling against the ropes, she liked this feeling of fighting against something, even as she wanted absolutely everything that it had to offer.

“You’re in luck,” Pasco huffed, “Because seeing you quiver like that really turns me on.”

“T-tell me what you like,” Ada gasped, “I w-want to make you come!”

“Hmmm I don’t know. I like to see you denied.”

It took Ada a moment to make sense of what he was saying, and she wanted to be sure she had it right. “S-so the more I try to come, the f-faster you will come?”

Pasco moaned happily, a droplet of pre-cum beading at his tip. “Definitely.”

Ada slowed down her desperate rubbing for a moment to consider this. It was a time versus intensity tradeoff decision. If she really let herself go, really pushed herself up to the edge, then she would experience more deprivation and yet faster relief. If this worked anything like the way the sirens’ magic had, then she would have that many more orgasms flow through her body in rapid succession.

As torturous as it had been, something about the idea of testing the siren’s magic, of seeing just how many orgasms she could finally string together, made the decision for her.

“Okay, okay,” Ada finally said.

“Have you decided?”

“Yes! P-pasco I’m gonna… I’m gonna come!”

“You can try,” Pasco said, and the delicious growl sent Ada teetering headlong into the brick wall that had become her edge.

Before she had even come down she threw herself into it again, fingers gripping at her spot, hand rubbing furiously against her clit. She twisted and writhed and moaned, her whole body begging wordlessly for sensation, for relief, and she screamed as she teetered on the edge before being pulled back down by the insistent weight of the song, like a sailor to a watery grave.

Ada was unaware of anything other than her lust-drunk haze and the song. Now that she was pushing up against its boundaries, the song remained ever at the foremost of her awareness. Every time Ada edged herself, every time she screamed and shook and begged on the rock, the song grew a bit louder. A bit faster. It drifted and swelled in time with Pasco’s arousal.

If Ada had given herself over to the song, she may have actually been able to keep her arousal alongside Pasco’s, like a dog on a leash and heeled dutifully at the ankle of their master.

But Ada was rabid, frothing at the mouth, yowling from inside a muzzle, yanking desperately on the leash, first one way and then the other, hoping and begging for the master to make a misstep so that she could finally do what her body was screaming at her to do and run.

A new tone started in the song and it began to crescendo. Ada opened her eyes.

Pasco’s face was enraptured, shining with pre-orgasmic bliss.

Ada shoved herself to the edge again, elated and eager for her final release…

But the song did not break, it held a long note and then pulled back down, and Ada quivered, confused, on the rock.

Pasco grinned down at her, no longer so composed, but still clearly very in control of himself. “You didn’t think I was going to let you off that easy, did you?”

“Yes!” Ada whimpered. “T-this is n-not easy!”

“Foolish little dragon,” Pasco said, though he panted now. “We play by my rules now.”

Now that the song was so close to the peak, so loud and insistent, Ada could not help but be swept along in its verses. As Pasco edged, her body tried to climax but was denied. Each time, a new instrument joined the building crescendo, a new flavor of pleasure.

This was exactly what she had wanted. This was exactly what she could not get any other way. She fought against it so hard, and the fighting felt so good.

Ada lost count of how many times he edged them like that, though she did notice the way his breathing became more and more ragged, and his skin became damp with sweat. She noticed the way he dripped, and that it landed in the center of her chest.

She wanted to beg him to come on her, to tip him over the edge that way, but she could not stop moaning and panting, because she could not stop rubbing herself.

“Ada…” Pasco moaned. The song ticked towards crescendo again, now a full symphony.

“Yeah?” Hope flickered anew.

“Ada… I’m coming!”

“Yes!”

This experiment gave them one other crucial piece of information, which was that its magic did not cause Ada to orgasm with Pasco, but rather after him. She lay on the rock as he pumped rope after rope of cum onto her chest, the longest she had ever seen him orgasm for, and as his last few quivers dripped onto her skin, she hovered in a moment of sheer suspense.

And then it was as if the ground dropped out from under her and she plummeted with a delighted scream into the weightless, senseless bliss of climax.

She came only once, though with the echoing waves of pleasure that rippled powerfully through her, she was hard-pressed to say whether you could really call it just one orgasm. She did, however, remain a dragon. Her body had spilled down into the pool and her head rested on the warm rock next to Pasco.

The locket was still open, and the song was very soft, and very calm.

Ada’s draconic arousal started to fight against it, and she quivered. She would have come immediately, if not for the locket’s magic. She worried that she might actually hurt Pasco if he teased her like this.

But Pasco took a deep breath and put his hand gently on her snout. “Shhhh,” he said. “Breath with me. In…”

She did, pulling a wind past Pasco and ruffling his still-damp hair.

“And out…”

Her hot breath washed over him, drying his sweat.

After a few more cycles, Ada found herself relaxing. The waterfall washed pleasantly over her back, like a heavy blanket.

Pasco’s hand on her snout was sensual, intimate, but not sexual. She listened to the song, really just listened, and she realized then that she had not once, ever before, felt calm as a dragon.

She started to purr and they just lay like that, him stroking her muzzle, her dozing in the sun, for a long while.