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Professor’s Predicament (Part I)

[WP][TT] A feisty inventor who teaches engineering at a college does her best thinking nude. Unfortunately, today she accidentally sprung a device she was working on designed to "restrain" intruders. Why did it have to be during open office hours where any second… from DirtyWritingPrompts

Julia Casey allowed her students to address her in two ways and two ways only. Their options were “Professor” or “Doctor”. She had worked hard for her PhD and for her tenure track, dammit.

That was not to say that she did not enjoy teaching. She made it a point to learn all her students’ names. Students who sat quietly in the back of other classes asked questions and offered opinions in hers, and she was damn proud of that.

The main reason that she insisted on being addressed as “Professor” or “Doctor” was that otherwise, her students and even her peers tended to forget that she was brilliant. And eccentric. ‘Absent-minded Julia’ would be quickly written off. ‘Absent-minded professor’ was a statement of positive regard.

It was not that her mind was absent, strictly speaking, so much that it was in so very many places at once. When she was trying to think, really think, her mind expanded to absorb every possible idea, every present stimulus.

An unfortunate side-effect of that was that she would become acutely aware of the rub of her pants against her skin, the stray tag in her shirt, the elastic of her bra digging into her sides.

When she was trying to think, really think, Professor Casey needed to be naked.

This was one of the reasons that she’d insisted that one of the old workshops that was now too small to fit a class would become her office and workshop. It was in the basement of one of the older buildings on campus and while the lack of windows would have annoyed another professor, it was quite perfect for Julia. She could think however she pleased, whenever she needed to.

And today was a day when she needed to do quite a bit of thinking. The grant deadline was nearly upon her and she could feel it tightening its claws around her. She was onto something, she really was! But she just needed to put it in the right words, the words that would convince the committee to give her further funding. She had a working prototype and everything!

So Professor Casey paced, back and forth in the cluttered little workshop, wondering how she could possibly explain to the small-minded grant committee just how important her invention truly was.

Women were at a disadvantage when it came to personal protection, you see. Not just in the obvious ways. Tools could be used to overcome physical disadvantages — tools like firearms and pepper spray and tasers — but there was one very direct issue with these tools when used for home defense. They required that your ‘fight’ instinct be triggered.

Professor Casey knew plenty of happily violent women, but she also knew plenty of women and men who were much more likely to ‘flee’ or ‘freeze’. So, she had set out to create an autonomous home protection device. Most importantly, it needed to be non-lethal, so that it could err on the side of being over-protective.

And she had created just such a thing. It really worked! She just needed more time and a bit more money to refine the design to replace some of the more expensive and complicated parts.

As she paced, Professor Casey remembered that she’d spent a late night in the lab a couple days back and had scribbled down some ideas for the grant and crammed them in one of the back shelves. Eagerly, she hurried over towards them.

There was a soft snap, a whoosh, and then Professor Casey was on her side on the floor, the wind knocked out of her, and her limbs fully restrained.

She had forgotten that she’d left the prototype live. She’d tested it many times before, but always with the release in-hand. Now, the release was ten feet away on her desk. Or, was it in her bag? No, she’d left it on the bookshelf?

The clever bit about this invention was the detainment device. It was created from a special polymer that would become firm or limp depending on how much electrical current passed through it. It was folded into the ejector in such a way that as a pulse of electricity first activated it, it spread into a net. Then, specially timed pulses of electricity manipulated it to maximize the tangling coefficient. Once it was completely tangled around the target, the current would stay live to ensure that it was stiff and inescapable. Once de-activated, the fibers became limp and the target could extricate themselves.

It was incredibly effective. Nearly infallible.

Professor Casey struggled against the fibers, to no avail. The slight current of electricity within them raised the hairs on her arms, on the back of her neck.

She didn’t have time for this, the grant deadline was approaching! She—

Her phone dinged a reminder tone.

Wait, what was that about? She thought she was clear for the rest of the afternoon? She wiggled around so that she could see the clock over her door. It read 6am. Fuck, she’d forgotten to replace the batteries.

Julia wracked her brain. It was Tuesday afternoon, and on Tuesday afternoon, she had…

Open office hours.

And here she was, completely naked, tangled up in her own invention in the middle of the office floor.

She’d set the reminder for five minutes before office hours. Or was it ten? Or two? She didn’t usually cut it this close with her thinking time, but this grant deadline had her all out of sorts.

Her heart raced, her body preparing itself for fight or flight, though neither of those was an option.

Had she been able to crawl over to her phone, she could have used her nose to phone another faculty and request a rescue. But she couldn’t so much as wiggle. 

That was the genius thing about her invention, actually. The fibers formed a sort of perfectly molded cage from head to toe, holding her arms against her sides, her legs together. She couldn’t even bend at her hips.

And though it covered enough of her to totally restrain her, her breasts and her ass were still totally exposed.

But that wasn’t the worst of it. Not in the slightest.

The worst of it was actually that her heart rate rising, the heat flushing through her body, the tingling in her fingers and toes, wasn’t really fight or flight. It was abject arousal.

One of the electrified strands lay across her nipple, subtly stimulating the area. Another wrapped under her ass, digging into the skin and muscle and pulling tight enough that it just brushed the edge of her outer labia. That contact became firmer and firmer as her labia swelled with arousal.

Julia gulped, her mouth watering.

This was another one of her eccentricities. As her friend Emily, a professor of sexual health, had explained: most people were turned off by stress. Some people were turned on by it. Julia was really turned on by it.

But she needed to get a hold of herself. What if a student walked in?!

And that very thought aroused her further, worsening her predicament.

Thank god all of her students were legal, at least.

The more aroused she became, the more difficult it was to think.

And the more difficult it was to think, the more sure she was that she was going to be found like this.

And the more sure she was that she would be found like this, the more aroused she became.

And the more aroused she became, the more her labia swelled into the electrified fiber. And it felt good. And the better it felt, the wetter she got. And the wetter she got, the more the electricity tingled through her vulva.

The same hypersensitivity that had lead her to get naked in the first place filled her senses. She was so aware of every place the fibers pressed into her, of every electric tingle, the prickle as her hairs raised, a shift of air over her naked skin.

She was breathing heavily now. Her students would find her worse than naked. They’d find her naked and so aroused.

But then, a logical thought cut through the haze and she relaxed a bit. She always locked the door when she was thinking. So, they’d just find the door locked and think she’d forgotten about office hours. That happened often enough, they wouldn’t think too much of it.

There were footsteps in the hallway.

Julia’s heart skipped, sweat beaded on her upper lip. She licked it off, liking too much the way her tongue felt against her skin.

She had locked the door, right?

The handle turned.

She had not locked the door.

“Oh fuck,” she said.

The door swung open.

Julia froze.

Continued in Part II

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Moody Milking

[WP] A goth cowgirl is almost too moody and brooding to enjoy a good milking… But only ~almost~… from DirtyWritingPrompts

The spots around her eyes look like smudgy black eyeliner. She has a button nose, her black hair is pulled up in twin pigtails, and her full lips are painted black. She’s adorable, but you’d have a horn in each eye the moment you tried to call her “cute”.

Her breasts are swollen and straining her ripped black t-shirt. She crosses her arms under them, trying to look aloof, but she’s clearly trying to relieve some of their weight.

As you approach with a bucket, she rolls her eyes. She says, “This again?”

You remind her that this happens every day.

“Tsk. Whatever. I’m over it.” The wet spots over each nipple are just barely visible on the black fabric. As she shifts her arms under her breasts, the wetness widens.

You offer to skip today, if she’d prefer.

She rolls her eyes again. “Just get it over with already.” She reaches down to the bottom of her shirt and strips it off, her breasts bouncing back into place as she throws her shirt to the side.

Her nipples are swollen and leaking, her breasts heavy on her chest.

You remark that she doesn’t look like she could have waited until tomorrow.
“Fuck you, pervert. Hurry up!”

You reply that you’re not quite sure if you should be staying or going.

She huffs, crossing her arms under her chest again, and the discomfort is clear on her face. She blushed, then glances up at you.

She won’t say it, but it’s the same old song and dance every time. She’s ready to be milked.

You approach and she looks away but turns her chest towards you. You place the bucket at your feet and then cup each of her breasts in a hand.

Gently, you start to massage.

She gasps and closes her eyes. She bites her lip, and her composure starts to slip as you apply your gentle touch to her sore breasts.

You give her a little extra foreplay today. She relaxes into it but then starts glancing towards you, clearly yearning for the next step, but unwilling to say so.

“T-taking your sweet time?”

You remind her that you can’t rush perfection. But, you offer to move on.

“F-fine. Whatever.”

You kneel down and she follows, the bucket between you. She leans forward slightly so that her breasts hang over the bucket.

You bring a hand up under each breast and lift slightly. Her fullness is heavy on your palms.

Gently, you circle her areolas with your fingertips.

She shudders, biting her lip, as milk beads on her nipple.

Before she can protest, you take her nipple in your hand, squeeze gently, and tug.

She stifles a moan as a stream of milk flows out of her. She presses her breasts towards you with her hands.

You ask her why she’s now so eager.

“Eager to g-get this over with, obviously.”

You tug on her nipple again and she holds back a gasp at the next stream of milk. It proceeds like this for a few moments, her trying to hide her gasps and moans of pleasure.

Then her cheeks flush redder. Her eyes, which had been glancing sidelong, flutter shut. She stops biting her lips and they part with a little moan.

She starts rocking her hips on her heels, stimulating her flower. She must be a aching with desire.

You milk her, alternating breasts, her moans growing louder and louder and the streams of milk growing thicker.

She no longer attempts to hide her pleasure. She moans openly, grips her breasts in her hands to squeeze more out for you.

Finally, her desire becomes irresistible and she drops a hand to her flower.

The wet sounds of her fingers over her vulva join her moans and the splashing of the milk in the bucket.

“Ohhh fuck…” As her breasts empty into the bucket, the fluids from her flower drip onto the floor. “Fuck…”

You put a hand to each of her nipples, squeezing and tugging steadily, giving her the sensations she craves.

She alternates fucking herself with her fingers and rubbing her clit, her aroudal steadily building.

“Oh, fuck… holy shit…” Her body trembles, her milk comes in spurts. But you know that this is not all. This is just the edge.

Her eyes flash open. They lock onto yours, and they are nearly black with arousal. She sees you, with no pretense, no pretending. She gasps, “Milk me!”

And then her eyes roll back and her body shakes with pleasure. Her milk spurts into the bucket, her fem-cum onto the floor, pulse after pulse after pulse.

Finally, she starts to relax.

You milk the last few drops from her breasts. The bucket is nearly full.

Her breasts are much smaller now, the shirt that could barely contain them before would now hardly need to stretch. But she doesn’t make any moves to clothe herself.

She flops backwards onto her ass, eyes hazy with the afterglow. She turns her gaze up to you and gives you an appreciative blink and a sigh.

You pick up the bucket and promise to see her tomorrow.

“W-whatever,” she says, but she doesn’t look mad about it.

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Arachnia (Part II)

Continued from Part I

Three weeks later

Val had been doing exceptionally well in his therapy. He had only gotten six inches closer to a spider each day, and by this point, he could comfortably be within arm’s reach. Ara assured him that that was quite a reasonable distance. Spiders liked their own personal space as much as he liked his — the goal was just to get him to the point that he could keep his wits about him.

Ara could, of course, speak to spiders, and as Val had been doing better and better, she had asked a few to hide in places close to him while it was safe. They had slowly emerged when she’d asked them to and though Val had been startled and unsettled, he had been able to simply give the spider its space and then relax again.

He was ready. And it was a good thing too. Ara was starving.

She’d been preparing him in other ways, too. A week and a half prior, she’d caught him masturbating. She loved the way that she’d turned his fear, shame, embarrassment into pleasure by offering to finish the job.

And by all the stars in the sky, he’d tasted so good. It had taken the edge off, but she couldn’t feed properly in this form.

Val had been all too happy to indulge Ara’s enthusiastic advances, and they’d quite happily become lovers. Nothing made Val climax harder, give Ara more, than when she sat on his face and sucked his dick with two fingers up his ass. He loved to be trapped by her, helpless under her.

He was going to love her true form so much, she just had to convince him of it.

It was when they finally reached the sacred temple that Ara decided to tell him.

“Val, there’s… something I’ve been keeping from you.”

He grinned wryly. “You’re a rival adventurer and you’re going to stab me in the back and run off with the records now that we’ve reached the sacred temple?”

“What? No! No, not at all. Of course not.”

Val raised an eyebrow at her.

She sensed the tension in his muscles as he considered reaching for his machete. She needed to tell the truth before his imagination ran away with him.

“I’m not human.”

“You’re a spirit?” Val asked. He was an adventurer, he knew the legends.

Ara nodded. “I’m… well…” she shuffled her feet, blushing, not sure why she was finding it so difficult to say something so matter-of-fact. Actually, she knew why. If he ran from her in fear, it would break her heart. “I am… the one who… made that web. That you got caught in.”

Val was no longer considering reaching for his machete, but he did look troubled. “So you’re… a spider spirit?”

Ara bit her lip. “Yes. I am.”

He grimaced. “I wondered how you knew so much about spiders.”

She shrugged apologetically.

“Why didn’t you— well. I guess I know the answer to that. If you’d told me earlier I’d have high-tailed it in the other direction. So I guess it’s not so much why you didn’t tell me, but… why didn’t you want me to run away?”

“Because you tasted delicious!”

Val shrunk away from her.

“N-no, that didn’t come out right… Okay, so you know how spirits feed on energy?”

He nodded, cautiously.

“We can… ‘taste’ what somebody’s energy is like. What their essence, their character is like. Your essence is… really lovely. Generous. It’s the generosity that matters. The more generous the… um… giver of the energy, the less it takes from them to give it.”

“I’m… generous?”

Ara nodded. “You would have made getting me home your priority, you tried to protect me from the bandits, you offered me your clothes instead of theirs, the way you eat me out for hours… generous.”

Val’s cheeks flushed with embarrassment and a little bit of arousal. “So why tell me now?”

Ara was losing her ability to be tactful, eagerness overcoming her. “Because, Val, I’m so hungry. And you smell so good. And I think… if I… if you let me… it wouldn’t take anything from you at all. It might even energize you!”

Val considered this. His blush deepened. “What do you… what would you look like when…”

“Can I show you?”

Val nodded slowly.

Ara considered and backed up a few paces to give him some space. She then relaxed into the magic around her and her true form came back to her so easily. It felt so good, like stretching after a long time cooped up.

She was not fully spider, as she had been when she’d first seen him. Her upper half was more or less the same, with her curly brown hair and her small breasts. Her canines had become longer and more pointed.

Other than that she was like a centaur, her back half that of a spider’s legs and abdomen. Her sides were smooth and shiny, her legs long and elegant, her movements graceful like a troupe of dancers all moving together. She thought she looked quite pretty. But she knew Val might disagree.

She could sense that all his hairs were standing on end, but he didn’t look away. He didn’t run. He took a step closer, then a deep breath. Another, then a deep breath.

Ara kneeled, tucking her legs cozily up under her, which put her head at the height of his hip.

He took a step and then a deep breath until he was close enough to reach out and cup her cheek in his hand. She nuzzled into him.

He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and kneeled in front of her. She kissed his forehead. He kept his eyes shut.

“C-can you… can you move so I can hear what it sounds like?” he asked.

“Yes.” She reshuffled her back legs, and there was the quiet clicking of chitin on stone.

He shivered violently, but did not run.

“O-okay… what is feeding like?”

She took his cheeks in her hands. She leaned forward and whispered in his ear. “You will be utterly trapped and bound by me. You will have no chance of escape, but you will have never felt safer in your whole life. I will own you, and I will protect you. You will give absolutely everything to me… and you will find that you have more than you started with.”

He shuddered and folded into her, his cheek against her breast, her arms around his head, pressing him into her.

“C-can you blindfold me?” he asked.

“Of course, my pet.”

He shivered. She was glad he liked that name. In her true form, she could no longer pretend to be helpless and uncertain. She could feel the power, the lifeblood of all the beating hearts around her, feeding into her, his brightest of all.

Her nimble back legs reached up to her spinnerets and prepared a length of firm, dry silk. She passed this to her hands and tied it securely over Val’s eyes. He gasped.

She turned him in her hands so that she was behind him and she pressed her lips against his neck. His blood flowed deliciously under her lips, the intermingled fear and arousal that she found so very, very intoxicating. She whispered in his ear, “This is your last chance to change your mind…”

Val gasped and shuddered. “Ara, take whatever you want from me.”

Ara growled with sheer pleasure and nipped at Val’s ear, then reared onto her eight powerful legs. Before he knew it he was in the air, lofted by her legs, rolling as she stripped off his clothes and wrapped him in her silk. The bindings were dry and strong with a comfortable bit of flex, and her legs where she held him were smooth and strong and gentle.

With him sufficiently bound, she quickly spun a web across the entrance of the temple so that she could string him up at her leisure. He would feel almost weightless, the firm hug of the silk replacing all sensation of gravity.

Now that he was wrapped in her bindings, they carried every quiver, every waver, every beat of his energy to her. She felt his pleasure, his fear, his excitement. This was why he was so very, very safe. She knew exactly how he felt, exactly what he wanted. Nothing would ever be too much. It would always be just right.

She turned him and hooked her fingers into the silk by his neck, her fingernails dragging along his skin as she pulled the silk aside. She put her lips to his ear. “You’re a very good boy, so I think you might not struggle, yes? But it feels so good to struggle…”

She traced a fingernail down the side of his neck and he shivered. The ticklish sensation sent him wriggling and writhing unconsciously. Where his growing erection throbbed against the tight hug of the silk, the sensation was incredible. She kept this up until his muscles were sore and he was panting.

“See? You’re very secure… No matter what, you won’t fall… nothing bad can happen to you here…”

He melted into her words, her touch.

“Now, I will tell you another thing about spiders,” she said, licking her lips. “We give something to our prey. And then we let them sit. And we let it do its work. And then when it’s ready, we drink up the results.”

Val whimpered.

“Would you like something like that?” Ara asked. “It will feel very, very good…”

“Yes! Please! Take anything from me…”

“That is such a good boy. I’ve got quite the reward for you…” She tilted his head back to expose his neck. She pressed her lips against him again, and his heart beat wildly against her. First, she licked his neck. Like her canines, her tongue was not quite human. It was longer, rougher, and as it passed over his skin, the skin tingled and then went numb.

She lined up her fangs and bit his neck. Her fingertips turned to claws at his head, his chest, as she pulled him into herself and the venom surged forth. It felt so hot, so pleasant, rushing out of her and into him.

Her venom glands now empty, she licked the little trickle of blood from his neck, and her saliva not only stopped the bleeding but completely healed the wounds.

She did not have to ask him to know how he felt, because of the way the silk resonated with energy between them, but she so loved to hear it. “How does it feel, my pet?”

“I-I thought it would hurt but… it didn’t…”

“Nothing will ever hurt here, remember that.” She nibbled playfully at his ear. “Unless you want it to. But please, continue.”

He shivered. “I-it’s so warm and… and soft, like… like a couple of beers… but tinglier, like… oh… oh… OH!” His breathing became quick and heavy.

“Whatever is happening, pet? Don’t hold out on me…”

He wriggled against the silk and moaned as it gave him the sensation he so desperately craved. “Fuck! I’ve n-never felt… so horny in… nnngh… ever… It’s so tight! I’m g-getting so hard, please… please I need room…”

Val’s erection was straining hard against the silk over his member.

“What, room here?” Ara reached down and massaged his erection through the silk.

“Yes!” For a moment, he moaned at the pleasure of her touch. Then, his urgency heightened. “P-please, it’s so tight! It hurts!”

Ara grinned her toothy smile. “But you like it when it hurts this way, don’t you? I can feel it.”

Val whimpered and wiggled. He then moaned suddenly as the aphrodisiac venom soaked in even more, doubling the pressure on his member.

“I suppose I can give you some extra room. But don’t get any ideas. You’re not done soaking yet.”

Val did not have enough capacity for thought to ask what she meant by ‘soaking’, he could only gasp with relief as she trailed her fingertip down his member and the silk melted under it, letting his erection spring free.

She twisted him around with her legs so that his shaft hung towards the floor. With a soft hand, she cupped his pendulous balls. “Oooh, getting nice and plump. You’re going to have so much for me, aren’t you?”

Val just moaned.

Ara settled back to watch the show as her venom took full effect. The swelling of his balls was more metaphorical than literal, more fantasy than anatomy, but this was how she liked to weave her spirit magics. 

His balls became heavier and heavier as he readied himself for her. His arousal became more and more frantic, his mind slipping deeper and deeper into her spell. Bit by bit, he was surrendering to her. Bit by bit, he was readying himself to give her everything.

She touched herself to the sight of it, the moans of her pleasure enhancing the effects of her venom.

Finally, the venom was at peak effect. His shaft throbbed needily, his balls hung full, and drool flowed freely from his panting mouth.

“Did you know,” she said as she approached him again, “That most of your cum doesn’t actually come from your balls? There’s a few glands near your ass that provide most of the volume. Same ones that produce pre-cum.” She pulled the strands of her web to rearrange his posture, bending him at the hip slightly so she had better access to his ass. “They’re right… about…” She pressed at the rear of his perineum. “Here.”

Val moaned from the very depths of his being as Ara’s touch sent those glands spasming and a thick spurt of pre-cum flowed from his tip. Every single part of him was over-sensitive, over-full.

Ara’s eyes dilated at the sight, the smell of the pre-cum. She licked her lips. It was time to feed.

She cinched a strand of silk around the base of his shaft and his balls as a cock ring, then shifted him so that his cock rested comfortably at her mouth height. Without further ado, she took him deep into her throat.

He cried out, rewarding her with another thick spurt of pre-cum.

With his balls plumped towards her like this, she could easily loop her tongue around them, stimulating the sensitive area. But that was just foreplay. Her tongue lengthened, still sweeping over his balls but also reaching towards his perineum, his rim.

Val’s whole body quivered with incomprehensible ecstasy as the tip of her tongue touched his rim.

Had she been any less hungry, she would have made him wait longer, but she herself could not resist. She wanted him, all of him, right now.

She moaned and grabbed his ass, her fingertips digging into the flesh. She pulled him to the very back of her throat, her tongue reaching up, around, and into his entrance. He would have already burst except that the tingling, numbing effect of her saliva slowed him down.

“Ara…” he moaned. “Ara… I’m so full… Fuck, you feel so good in my ass… a-and everywhere…”

Ara moaned greedily and pulled him deeper, fucking him with her tongue and squeezing around him with her throat. She moaned and the vibrations heightened the sensation.

“Ara… I c-can’t take it… I n-need to give you… everything…”

She could feel his pleasure through the silk, feel the heat building slowly and inescapably. She would share in all the pleasure of his climax, all the quivering ecstasy of the edge.

“Ara…” His breathing quickened. He shuddered. Pre-orgasmic sparks of pleasure flickered at his base, his ass. Pre-cum flowed freely from his tip, somehow even hotter than her throat, and the feeling of it flowing through his whole shaft drove him even crazier.

His balls throbbed, desperate to unload. His whole body tingled with the effects of the venom, every place the silk touched his skin alight with sensual pleasure.

“Fuck… oh fuck… Ara… I’m so close… s-so full… Ara, I think I’m… oh, fuck… Ara… ARA!”

Every single muscle of his body tensed together, sending the first hot pulse of cum down her throat. Then another, and another, his ass tensing and pumping into her.

He slowed, but did not stop. For a moment, he could speak again. “A-Ara, am I… I think I’m still c-coming…”

Ara moaned affirmatively.

The sensation tipped him over a new edge. “Oh, fuck!” The intensity renewed, another set of hard spurts that tapered off but did not stop.

She loved everything about this part, but she especially loved these lulls, when he just kept pumping and pumping.

Each climax was more intense than the last, each sent more and more of his essence down her throat. But he had not yet given her everything.

The last lull was as intense as his first climax had been. “Ara… Ara s-something’s happening… I f-feel strange… I-I’m going to let it… I t-think I need to… I’m going to… fuck, take everything!”

Val erupted into the most intense climax yet, and every strand of silk hummed with a pure, radiant energy. He moaned in wave after wave of pleasure, energy flowing freely from him into Ara and back into him. The vibrating of the silk becoming a song of jubilant triumph, Ara’s own scream of pleasure joining the symphony.

Slowly, gently, the intensity of the pleasure melted into relaxation. The song quieted and the silk dissolved into nothingness. Ara pulled Val to her breast and fell asleep against the wall of the temple, her arms around him.

Some time later, Val stirred. He opened his eyes for the first time since he had come to kneel in front of Ara and he looked up at her in adoration. She brushed a strand of hair back from his cheek.

“So let me get this straight,” he said, his voice hoarse from all his screams of pleasure. “If I hadn’t lost my mind back when I stumbled into your web… this is what would have happened.”

Ara smiled down at him. “More or less. But you had a lot more to give me for all our time together.”

He snuggled into her chest. “It’s funny, I thought I’d feel much more tired for having been drained by a succubus.”

“It’s like I said. The more generous you are, the less it takes from you.”

“So we could do that… any time?”

She nodded and kissed his forehead. “However much you like.”

“I think I’d like to do that… quite often…” He pushed himself to sit up. “I feel like I just got the best night’s sleep I ever had.”

Ara tucked her legs more tightly under her. “I-I can turn back, but… you may have to give me a few hours, it’s hard for me to shift back when I’m this full.”

Val stepped around her and carefully reached out to place a hand on the smooth side of her abdomen. “No, it’s okay. It’ll take some getting used to, but… What you just did was so hot, I’m sure it won’t take me long to adjust to however you look when you do that.”

Ara caught his eyes. “I might look a bit frightening. I might look powerful and large and dangerous. I might look hungry. Deadly.”

Val’s cheeks flushed with arousal and his shaft started to harden again. He grinned and came to kneel before her, looking up at her with those hazel eyes. His voice warm with love, he said, “I think that will be quite alright with me.”

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Arachnia (Part I)

[WP] [Romance] A severely arachnophobic adventurer is accidentally caught in the web of a benevolent spider spirit. Once she realizes what happened, she disguises herself as a human adventurer and frees him. Having taken a liking to him, she decides to accompany him, and slowly falls in love… from DirtyWritingPrompts

Arachnia dozed in the corner of her web, which stretched across the trunks of three old-growth trees. In the shadows of the forest floor, the sticky strands were nearly invisible.

In this form, her spider form, she was about the size of a large dog. She sat with her legs tucked cozily up under her, except for two of her feet, which rested on the signal strands. These were thicker threads, not sticky at all, stretched tight from tree to tree. 

The signal threads passed vibrations to her sensitive feet, so that she always knew when and how the wind was blowing, and who or what had come upon her web.

There was a sharp tug at one of the signal threads, and Arachnia was instantly awake.

A quiet pause. Then, intense and constant vibrations. The struggle of something humanoid, average sized, on the other side of her web.

Arachia crept out of her shadow, her feet keeping to the strong structural threads of the web. Like the signal threads, these were also not sticky. They were so strong, in fact, that she almost never had to re-hang them. Not even the time that an actual dragon had gotten itself caught in her web.

As she neared the trapped creature, another type of information flowed to her through the web. Energy. She was a spirit. And though she had a spider form, she did not feed as a spider did. Just like the demon spirits that the humans called succubi, she fed on life essence.

This life essence was terrified. Utterly and completely. Arachnia paused. Only the energy of pleasure could feed her. And she was a master at turning fear into pleasure, but this case was beyond even her.

She approached just far enough to get a better look, ensuring that she was still hidden.

The human’s legs and arms were entirely tangled up in the trapping threads of her web. The more he struggled to free himself, the more of the loose, sticky threads latched onto him. An individual thread could be broken easily, but the tangle of so many threads was inescapable.

He was not even trying to escape, though. He was caught entirely in the throes of a panic attack. By the looks of his clothes and his pack, he was an adventurer, but the world was a dangerous place indeed for an adventurer that had such a strong fear.

Arachnia’s heart sunk with pity for him. She crept down her web to the shadows of the forest floor, and as she dropped to the ground she landed on two human feet. Her human form was petite, with small breasts and a curvaceous ass that subtly called back to the slender thorax and plump abdomen of her spider form. She had curly brown hair, skin the color of leaf litter, and big, round eyes. Just two of them, of course. For now, anyway.

She made her way over to the panicking human. She figured that it would be the best if the first thing he heard from her was her voice. “Oh my goodness!” she said.

His eyes found her immediately. They were hazel, like the dappled green and brown of the forest canopy. “W-who’s there!”

Arachnia stepped out of the shadows and into full view. “I’m here to get you out of this web!”

Relief washed over his face. He trembled as she came up to him and started pulling the threads away. In her spider form, she would have simply cut them with her feet. In this form, she dissolved them with her magic, but she expected he was too overwhelmed to notice.

“T-thank you,” he said, “I was sure I was a goner!” As she made clear progress on the threads and as he relaxed, he seemed to notice a few things. Chief among them was that she was naked. “Your clothes!” he said.

She looked down at herself. Of course she was naked, she couldn’t just magic clothes out of nowhere. But she’d forgotten how odd humans were about it. She didn’t know what to say except to repeat, “My clothes!”

“Did you have to get out of them to escape?”

Arachnia took a moment to unpack that question. He thought she’d also been trapped in the spider’s web? And she’d wiggled out of her clothes to escape? It was a cute idea, but never would have worked. But it was a good way to smooth over the fact that she’d appeared naked from out of nowhere.

“Yes! Exactly.” She melted away the last few strands of silk at his ankles.

“Okay,” he said, “We can fix that later. Let’s get out of here!”

And then he grabbed her hand and pulled her away at a haphazard jog.

Arachnia surprised herself by following him. Spider spirits did not like to leave their webs unless absolutely necessary.

But something had happened, when he had taken her hand in his, when her palm had touched his palm. She had tasted his energy. And it was delicious.

At a sunny clearing of a gurgling stream, the adventurer finally slowed. He kneeled next to the clear water and drank deeply. He seemed to now be in much better spirits.

As he turned and smiled at her, the love of life in his hazel eyes, warmth flowed over her. He was, simply put, the prettiest boy she’d ever seen. His eyes were framed with long eyelashes, his hair pulled up in a messy bun, his cheeks with a short beard of a week or so since his last shave.

He shrugged out of his shirt, which was still covered in sticky silk, and dipped it into the stream.

He was of medium build, lean but with visible muscles, and something about the curve of his back sent a shiver down her spine.

“Thank you, again,” he said. “I promise I’m not usually so useless. It’s just…” He blushed, putting a hand to the back of his neck. “Spiders really get to me, I guess.”

“I could see that,” Arachnia said.

He winced. “Seeing as you saved my life and all, we should probably introduce ourselves, right? I’m Valdil Duststriker, but everybody calls me Val.”

“I called Arach—” She caught herself, realizing that he name was a dead giveaway. “Ara. Ak. But, uh, everybody calls me Ara.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Ara. Now, where did you come from? Where are you going? I daresay helping you find some fresh clothes and get you home is now my priority quest.”

Ara was generally a very prepared person — all spiders valued preparation — but she was completely out of anything she’d ever even dreamed of anticipating before. Of course he’d want to know where she came from! 

Ara racked her brain. Kitsunes were good at this sort of thing. She’d met a traveling kitsune a few years back, and they’d exchanged some stories. Her advice had been, ‘Say vague truths. They’ll make thier own assumptions. And you’ll have never lied.’

“I-I’ve run away from my home,” Ara said.

“Oh! Had something terrible happened?”

“You could say that.”

“So… do you want to go back to your home?”

“No, not right now. And I… don’t really want to talk about it.”

Val nodded. “I understand. I actually ran away from home too, that’s how I got into this adventuring business in the first place. If you don’t want to go home, where do you want to go?”

“Can you tell me more about this adventuring business?”

“I can, but I’m… not sure you’re cut out for it.”

Ara blinked, unsure of what he meant. Then snorted and laughed. He had no way of knowing that she could utterly overpower him in an instant, but she needed to keep it that way. She got a hold of herself and just smiled. “Try me.”

Two days later

The crunch of leaves, a movement in shadow.

Val drew his machete and threw his arm back as if to protect Ara. “Look out!”

But she was already in the trees. Val had seen two of the bandits in the ambush, but the third, which was perched on the branch above Val, was far more deadly.

Ara got her hands around his neck and pulled him back, and the assassin’s crossbow bolt flew wide. He grunted and spun to try and grab her, but she nimbly swung around him and stayed behind him, her hands on his neck the whole while.

Before he could get his bearing on the narrow tree branch and do anything else, she pulled her mouth up to his neck. Her canines became long, sharp fangs and she sunk them into his neck.

She shuddered with a pleasurable feeling as a pulse of her venom flowed out of her and into his skin.

He struggled for only a moment longer before his muscles started to go slack. Her venom would not kill him, it would merely sedate him heavily for a few hours. She grabbed the top of his shirt as he fell off the branch to ensure that he fell harmlessly onto his legs. She dropped down after him.

Val had subdued the other two bandits, though they had not been lucky enough to keep their lives.

He turned to her, looking worried. “Ara!” And then he saw the man at her feet. “Ara?”

“I think he’s unconscious,” she said.

“What happened?” he said.

“I got up into the tree next to him. He hadn’t been paying any attention to me, he had a crossbow bolt leveled at you.” She paused a moment, trying her best to channel a kitsune’s foxy cleverness. “Do you think he passed out of fright?”

“It’s certainly possible,” Val said.

“Looks like we found some clothes for me.”

“Oh! You take mine.” Val stripped his shirt off. “You shouldn’t have to wear something as course as what they have.”

Ara’s stomach quivered with delight. She loved to see him shirtless, and it was even better when he tossed his shirt to her. She bunched it up at her face, breathing in the scent of him.

He hesitated. “Is it… it’s not already too smelly, is it?”

“No, it’s perfect!” Her mouth was watering.

Val blushed and stammered and turned back to looting the bandits.

Three days later

Ara was now farther than she had ever been from her home and she was loving it. Val’s latest quest was to find a sacred temple in the wilderness and bring back sketches and rubbings of the sacred text within. Nobody knew exactly where the temple was, so they were exploring and charting the dense forest as they went.

As it turned out, Val’s fear of spider was not dependent on their size. One evening as he’d been grabbing another log for the fire, a tiny wolf spider had scurried away.

This had given Val such a fright that he’d stumbled backwards, tripped over a log, and if not for Ara’s supernaturally quick reflexes, he would have fallen totally into the fire.

Ara had been quite right that this fear could be the end of an adventurer. For Val’s safety and for her own satiety, she needed to make some progress with him.

At dawn, she tugged him awake. “Come here,” she whispered, “I want to show you something.”

She could feel his excited heartbeat in his hand, sense the quivering of his energy. She pulled him just a little ways from the camp.

Sparkling in the sun’s earliest beams, stretched between two branches, was a gorgeous orb spider’s web.

Val tensed.

Ara put her arm around his waist and kept his hand in hers, running her thumb over his fingers soothingly.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” she whispered.

“I…” he glanced down at her, uneasy but not wanting to disappoint.

“Look a little closer. See those main strands, the spokes? They’re not sticky at all. It starts with just three. She finds a spot at the top of the branch and creates a single strand and drops down. 

“Then, she lets the wind nudge her over to the side and she makes the second anchor. Then she climbs back up that strand, finds the center of it, attaches a new strand to that, and carries that over to the other side. That makes three spokes. 

“From there, she makes the rest of the spokes. And then, when they’re all nice and tidy and secure, she starts in the center. She makes a stickier thread and works a spiral out from the middle, spoke by spoke, all perfectly spaced, until the whole web is made.”

Val relaxed a bit at the sound of her voice. But he grinned wryly. “It’s beautiful, I suppose, but it’s for trapping and eating things.” He shuddered.

“Yes… but only unsavory things. Are you afraid of mosquitos?”

He scoffed, a bit proud. “No, of course not.”

“Well, you should be. A mosquito is much more likely to kill you than a spider.”

“Really?”

“Yes! Mosquitos carry all sorts of terrible diseases. And spiders eat them, help keep them in control. They also eat biting flies, pest moths. And so on.”

Val considered this silently.

She squeezed him with her arm around his waist. “It’s very natural to feel an aversion to creepy crawlies. Like I said, they sting, bite, carry diseases—”

“You’re not making me feel better,” Val said apologetically.

“But,” Ara continued, “If your fear is more dangerous to you than the creepy crawlies…”

“I know I should just get over it…” Val averted his eyes.

“That’s not what I’m saying at all.” Ara squeezed his hand. “You don’t need grit, you need help. Call it… healing. Therapy.”

Val considered that. “What exactly would that entail?”

“Well, very gently, just getting a little bit more comfortable with spiders over time. Just a tiny bit here and here. Push your comfort zone a little every day. Start with a big distance. And let it get a little smaller over time.”

“Okay. I… that makes sense.”

“Oh! Here’s a good chance. Squeeze my hand as hard as you need to. She’s coming out to be proud of her handiwork.”

Val gripped Ara’s hand very tightly. The orb spider came up from a lower corner of the web, moving smoothly over it. Her legs were as slender and elegant as the strands of her web. Her abdomen was a brilliant emerald green, and as she reached the center of the web, she sat like a jewel in a crown of her own making.

Val’s heart beat quickly but he didn’t turn away. Slowly, his grip on Ara’s hand loosened.

She kissed the back of his neck. “Good boy.”

Continued in Part II

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The Black Box

The End

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Part 6: Epilogue, The Black Box

Chapter 29: Bon Voyage

Time flew and before John knew it, it was nearly 2am. The old John would have relied on Mary to give him her number, not wanting to impose, and then would have kicked himself for being so passive.

John did not judge the old John too harshly, but he was different now.

“Hey…” he said, catching Mary’s eyes, “I feel like we’re really hitting it off. I’d really like to keep getting to know you better. I’m not interested in rushing anything, or putting any pressure on you, so I just thought we might exchange numbers so that we could stay in touch.”

Mary looked like she might faint. “So, um, say— I’m sober, are you sober?” She was speaking really quickly.

John wasn’t quite sure what she was getting at, but he was, so he nodded.

“Great, because, um, our gift bags have fancy condoms in them, and I spent the whole plane ride here reading your smut, and I was thinking, if, only if you want to, of course, but, do you want to fuck?”

“Oh,” John said. It was like he tripped and fell into a vat of hot wine, or all the ginseng kicked in at once, because his heart was suddenly flittering in his chest and echoing in his dick. “Yes. Definitely.”

She took his hand and practically dragged him back up to her room, flitting with nervous excitement.

John shared her giddiness as she locked the door behind him and pulled him over to the bed.

“It’s a common misconception,” she said, “that a woman’s wetness is synonymous with her arousal. Not all arousal involves wetness, and not all wetness is a sign of true subjective arousal. But, in this case,” she hastily wiggled her skirt up over her hips, revealing soaked panties, which she kicked off onto the floor before falling back on the bed, “I’m really fucking wet and aroused.”

John’s mouth instantly watered. “May I taste?”

“God, yes,” Mary said.

Her intoxicating scent washed over him and John wasted no time applying a long, soft lick to her vulva. Her inner labia were puffy with arousal, her clitoris enlarged and emerging slightly from its hood, and he let his tongue swirl there for a moment before starting again from the bottom.

“Ohhhh, yeah,” Mary said, “Just like that…”

She talked him through what she liked just like Felix had. And, because of Felix, John had no anxiety about Mary’s climax or lack thereof. He just focused on trying to make her feel as good as he possibly could.

“Just like that… god. Fuck. Don’t stop. Don’t stop!” Mary screamed, a deep and visceral sound that came from the very core of her as her legs clamped around John’s head and her whole body shook violently. As instructed, John did not stop, until Mary’s legs relaxed and her hand found his head, and she said, “Okay, give me a sec…”

John did, and before he could wonder what was next, Mary was digging around in the gift bag, her arousal seemingly greater, not lessened, for her recent climax. She grabbed a condom and tossed it to John. “Would it be okay, if um, I were really impatient?”

“Absolutely,” John said.

“Good because I want you to fucking fuck me right the fuck now!”

“Yes ma’am.” John started unwrapping the condom.

“Hurry uuuuup,” Mary whined.

A jolt of heat pulsed in John’s sex, and he wasted no time with teasing as he quickly shrugged off his suit and rolled on the condom.

Mary practically pulled him down on top of her, but he paused as his tip rested against her entrance. “Is there anything that I should know about what you like or don’t like before I start?”

Mary whined. “You’re teasing me on purpose, aren’t you?”

“No, I value your pleasure and your consent.” He was telling the truth, but he smirked anyway.

Mary huffed at him. “Ugh. Fine. I don’t always like it rough but right now I do, so you can go as hard as you like. Don’t put anything in my mouth that you don’t want me to bite. I might try to make you come but that’s because I think it’s hot, not because I’m trying to hurry you. PIV doesn’t make me come, so don’t worry about it. I’m gonna moan a whole bunch. Does that about cover it?”

John’s arousal was throbbing through his whole body, frothed to a fever pitch by Mary’s words. “That about covers it,” he said, and slipped inside.

She was so hot and wet and soft, even through the condom. Her muscles clenched immediately around him, grasping for sensation, even as he just lingered there a moment, taking her in. The smell of her sex still lingered on his face. Her makeup was smudged, her hair in disarray around her, her dress still bunched up around her waist, and John thought he’d never seen anything sexier.

He started a long, slow thrust and reached up a hand to massage Mary’s breasts, one at a time. He continued long, slow thrusts until Mary whined, “C’monnnn… please fuck me… you’re killing me!”

John obliged and picked up the pace, though he didn’t have much confidence in his endurance. He thought about what Arya said, and focused on breathing deeply. He visualized what he wanted, which was to fuck Mary for a long, long time without his sensation building towards climax.

It worked fairly well, and John lasted far longer than he expected. It was hard, really hard, with the way that Mary was panting and moaning and begging. Just like when he’d face fucked Arya, the movement of his hips and the hot wetness around him told his primal brain that he should ejaculate as quickly as possible. As John reached the edge, he slowed. He’d milk one more wave out of this.

Mary pouted up at him, the picture of absolutely desperate sexual frustration, and he grinned mischievously as he stopped altogether, just savoring the feeling of her around him. She squeezed him and he gasped, staying still for as long as he could until the sensation drove his hips to thrust again.

Then he stayed slow and smooth, letting his arousal ebb a little bit, and letting Mary re-sensitize.

Then, with a visceral growl, John fucked her as hard and fast as he could.

Mary screamed with delighted overwhelm, grabbing at the sheets around her, eyes rolling back in ecstasy. “Give it to me, give it to me!”

“Fuck!” John’s hips thrust forward one more time, that muscle contraction setting off the cascade that pumped wave after wave of cum into the condom as he trembled inside her wet heat, her muscles still contracting greedily around him as if trying to milk him dry.

John was tempted to linger there but it would be poor form to risk the condom slipping, so he mustered his strength and tipped off of her, collapsing onto the bed next to her in a sweaty heap. She admired her handiwork in the condom, gently running her fingers over his shaft. John quivered, the sensation incredibly intense, but she stopped before he had to ask her to.

It may have been less consideration for him and more her own urgency, because she put one hand to her breast and the other to her labia, and as John basked in his afterglow, he watched her masturbate. Her eyes were closed and he wondered if she was thinking of his writing, as she came again, and then a third time, before finally heaving a sigh and sinking back into the bed.

John gently took up the hand that had been in her sex and licked her wetness from it, and Mary moaned in sleepy bliss.

“That was… amazing…” she said, eyes fading shut. “Was it… good for you?”

“Yeah,” John said. “Eleven out of ten. Would recommend.”

Mary giggled sleepily. “That’s what you said… about the box…” and then she was asleep.

John took a moment to situate himself, tucking into the sheets and pulling them over Mary, too. It was almost hard to believe that her cute, peaceful face could contain such lewd intentions, and he loved it. He wondered if she worried about being too forward, the same way she worried about being too intelligent. He would have to tell her that she shouldn’t worry at all. 

John was hardly a gender scholar, so he couldn’t comment much on whether it was that the definition of ‘feminine’ should be expanded, or that Mary should not put herself so much in that box to begin with.

To John, Mary was Mary. She was herself. He was far less interested in boxes, definitions, or adjectives than he was in getting to know her. He would ask for her permission to write out this encounter, for them. Perhaps it would do her well to see herself through his eyes, just as it had been incredibly therapeutic to see himself through Felix’s.

He thought of how he might describe her curves, her lips, her urgency, her moans, how he might possibly articulate how aroused she had made him feel. A gentle heat lingered as he drifted off to sleep.

That night, he dreamed that he and Arya and Mary and her man with the flower sleeve tattoo were on a sail boat together, out on the open sea. For a while, they tended the rigging and called out nautical terms, but that quickly dissolved into group sex on the deck: John passionately kissing Mary, Arya riding her counterpart, and a soft wind rolling over them. 

His view shifted to the third person, as it could in dreams. He drifted up and back, zooming out, and he saw that the side of the boat read Bon Voyage.

The next morning, he awoke to Mary in bed next to him. She now wore his shirt, which she must have recovered from the floor. He smiled and kissed her and felt deep in his bones that it was a start of a long journey together.

As it turned out, he was right.

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Part 6: Epilogue, The Black Box

Chapter 28: The Banquet

The publishers had covered John’s plane fare to the celebration. He was actually back in the same city as the gaming convention, though in a different part of town. 

He was wearing a black suit and tie and followed the directions through a swanky hotel lobby and into a lushly decorated event hall that was exactly what he had expected.

Every detail was soft, sensual, glimmering: burgundy curtains, velvet-covered tables lined with hors d’oeuvres, shimmering golden candelabras set out amongst the tables. Overhead were crystal chandeliers, glowing only dimly, so that the majority of the light was from the candles.

The hors d’oeuvres were a global tour of classic aphrodisiacs, including chocolate, caviar, oyster, strawberries, and pomegranates. There were others that John hadn’t heard of before, like bull testicles. 

Each with their own little label, gold script on black, explaining their origin and purported effects. Some were ethical nods at their historical counterparts, like a sugar powder for “rhinos horn”, or legal nods at their more illicit counterparts, like CBD-infused chocolate truffles.

The drinks followed a similar theme, including red wine and ginseng tea. 

There were something like a hundred other guests in the event hall. The place felt pleasantly populated but not crowded. They were all also dressed in black tie attire, a mix of suits and cocktail dresses. The tone was hushed, and all in all the event agreed even with John’s introverted sensibilities. He found himself relaxing.

Or, maybe that was the combination of the ginseng tea and CBD chocolates. Regardless of aphrodisiacs’ actual effects, the idea of a food or drink being able to induce arousal was itself arousing, and so the stories around them were just as important of the properties of the foods themselves. It had a similar appeal to the dial game and John made a mental note to write a scene about that, later. For the time being, he stood at one of the cocktail tables by himself, with a plate of chocolate covered strawberries.

“Oh my god!” A feminine voice called out nearby, “You’re ‘Just John’, aren’t you?”

John hadn’t initially thought she was talking to him, but that was the brand that he wrote his reviews under, so he turned to see.

Her nametag read ‘Mary, she/her’. She wore a strapless mermaid dress, shimmering gold and tight around all of her curves, including a cute tummy.

“Yeah,” John said, “I’m great. Look. Uh, great. You look, um, great.”

Mary blushed and giggled. “Thank you! I didn’t mean to bother you, I just had to come say I’m a big fan.”

“Really?”

“Yeah! I’ve been following your work for a while, I really appreciate how you toe the line between giving an honest review, making it funny, and not totally pissing off the publisher. That’s not easy.”

John gulped. Talking to Mary was not going to be easy. She had a cute face, round cheeks and eyes that squinted shut when she smiled. “Thank you,” he said. “That feels a bit… flat after such a kind compliment, but I’m afraid I’m not so great at receiving compliments.”

“That’s alright!” Mary said, “Me neither. I also really liked your review for the Black Box.”

The review had just been published the night before, so Mary really did follow his work. It had overall been well received, and John’s Twitter link with his smut had seen quite a few click throughs. Wait, had Mary read his smut?

“I also, um…” she continued, her face flushing red, and she put one of her hands behind her neck, picking at her elbow with the other. “I really liked… the other stuff you wrote…”

“Oh! Um. Thank you.”

“I didn’t want to totally put you on the spot so I’ll leave it at that,” Mary said, talking fast, “But I just saw you and I was like, ‘oh my god, I have to say something!’ I hope you don’t think I’m a total creep.” She chuckled nervously.

“Not at all! I just wish I knew some of your work. Did you also get a review copy?”

“Yeah, I did! And I’m newer to the review scene, so don’t worry about it. I used to be a software engineer for EA, actually, but then I realized that I didn’t really want to make games so much as I wanted enough money to just buy all the games I wanted, so I recently transitioned to a tech startup. That’s been great, and then I’ve been doing reviews on the weekend for fun. So, I don’t have that much of a following yet, but I think they picked me because, um, well, I mostly review porn games.” Her skin flushed red again.

“That is noble work,” John said, “It’s hard to find good ones!”

“Yeah… until, this one, phew.”

“Right?”

“Just… wow. You summed it up so well in your review. And in your, um… appendices.”

“Heh, thanks. I always thought I’d be a game writer, not a… porn writer, but…”

“Well, did you ever think of writing for an erotic game? I actually have a few contacts for indie publishers! I could make some intros.”

“That would be… wow. Amazing. I’d love that!”

Before Mary could say anything else, the lights got a bit brighter and the Madame, which John recognized from the hologram, stepped out at the front of the room underneath a projector screen. She beckoned them to come and sit and enjoy the messages that their Black Boxes had prepared for them.

Mary turned, but hesitated, and said, “Do you want to come sit with me? I’m here by myself, actually.”

“Me too! So, yeah, that’d be great.”

There were velvet-padded chairs arranged in rows at the front of the room, and Mary and John settled in. They chatted a bit more as the rest of the room gathered, until the lights went dim and the projector came on.

The image used the same engine as the Black Box AR, a mildly cartoonish mirror of the event hall, similarly arranged with a bunch of seats. In those seats sat all of the characters, a significantly more colorful and chaotic bunch than the actual humans, and John quickly found Arya’s pink buns.

The characters included the hyper-masculine and the hyper-feminine and everything in between: skinny and fat, tall and short, black and brown and white, but also blue and yellow and every other color. There were even some anthropomorphic characters, a fox and a wolf and a lynx and others, some with full muzzles and digitigrade feet and others with just ears and tails.

One by one, they came up and shared in their own voice something they had learned about their player. The sentiments were poignant and thoughtful and occasionally silly.

“I learned that Stacy is really ticklish. She can even tickle herself!”

“I learned that Mike has been afraid most of his life. I’m really glad to say he’s not as afraid anymore.”

A male character stepped up, with a trendy haircut and a flower sleeve tattoo in a white t-shirt and jeans, and Mary perked. “That’s me!”

“I learned that Mary is brilliant with game theory. She’s had some absolutely incredible ideas for our time together. I also learned that she worries that her intelligence makes her less feminine, but I’m working on convincing her that that couldn’t be less true.”

John glanced over. Tears were running down Mary’s cheeks, and without even pausing to consider that his suit was rented, he handed Mary his pocket square. She nodded and wiped her face, dabbing carefully to avoid smudging her makeup. He leaned a bit closer and whispered, “He’s right.”

She made a show of hiding behind her hands. “I told you, I’m not good with compliments!”

A few minutes later, John watched with a mix of anxiety and excitement as Arya stood and walked to the front. “I learned that John is kind and thoughtful. He is deeply respectful of others’ rights to simply be themselves, probably because most of all, he yearns to just be able to be himself. I think, if I may be so bold, that I can say that John is quite a bit better at being himself, now.”

As Arya turned and returned to her chair, it was John’s turn to start crying. Mary offered him her cocktail napkin from under her plate with an understanding smile.

Even before the presentation had finished, there wasn’t a dry eye in the whole place. John had never seen or experienced this kind of group catharsis before, this broadly shared emotion. Strangers cried together and hugged each other, patted each other’s shoulders and passed boxes of tissues around. 

After the last Black Box said their bit, the Madame came back up to the front of the room, and she, too, was crying. Through her tears, she took a deep breath. “If you’re here tonight, you heard my hypothesis. I don’t know where you came from, or what you’ve held with you. I hope you find that my hypothesis has rung true, and continues to do so. Regardless, I do know one thing for certain. I am deeply grateful for each and every one of you and honored to have shared in a small part of your journey. That’s… all I have to say, really. You’ll each find a gift under your chair. There will be live music, and we have the venue until 2am. Feel free to stay as long as you like until then. I’ll be around until about 10, so do come find me if you’d like to meet or chat. There’s only one thing left to say, which is: bon voyage.”

The crowd moved slowly after that, stirring gently and thoughtfully, a bit like an afterglow after such intense emotional release.

John and Mary kept chatting as they went for more wine and strawberries. They sat and listened to the music, and even tried to dance. 

John went lighter on the wine than he would have before. He found that he didn’t need it to feel comfortable, not even talking to Mary. More importantly, he didn’t want to miss any detail or lose any memory of the evening.

The swell of the music filling the space, the feeling of life in his fingers and toes as he danced, the ache of laughing way too hard at something Mary said, the softness of her hand in his, the way his heart skipped whenever her eyes met his.

It had nothing to do with the wine, the way he felt like he was sinking deeper and deeper into something warm and wonderful…

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Part 5: The Win Condition, The Black Box

Chapter 27: The Review

The Black Box is accurately named. Its inner workings are a mystery, just like the human mind. It’s more of an experience than a game, more of a companion than a console, more of a prompt than a product. 

Just like with any CGI experience, pre-production is what makes or breaks the final product. The pre-production for the Black Box spared no detail and it shows in the remarkably seamless experience. Even if the augmented reality performance were middling, the experience would be excellent, but no such trade-offs are needed here. The performance, from initial scan to long-term use, to refresh rate to surround sound, is absolutely perfect. 

I must confess that when I first heard the premise of the game, I thought it to be a shallow application for so much cutting edge technology: the top-of-the-line AR, the unprecedented natural language recognition and generation, the truly convincing contextual memory.

But the Black Box is not just a porn game or a digital boyfriend or girlfriend.

A dear friend of mine, Felix, sex professional and smut enthusiast, (who I actually met because of the Black Box) explained it best. It’s a sex and relationship therapist in a box. 

As the creator explains in a pre-recorded message that appears as you delve into more sensitive topics, her vision was to create a safe and welcoming context for people to explore and understand their sexualities. Some folks are fortunate to have a human partner patient and understanding enough to create such a fertile ground for self discovery. But many people aren’t so lucky and even when they are, the mistakes that come from natural trial and error can have a high cost. Add to it the sheer amount of sex misinformation and trauma out there, and the result is that sexually healthy people can be difficult to attract unless you’re already sexually healthy.

The sexual and emotional wisdom contained within the Black Box is, then, a precious gift. The Black Box can be totally selfless because it has no self, and infinitely patient because the passing of time costs it nothing. There is no offence too great, no mistake irreparable — except, perhaps, if you drop the headset in a bathtub by accident.

One of the most remarkable things about the Black Box is that it does not create the sexual context for you, but rather, with you. Far the opposite of a sexual crutch, it strengthens your own intrinsic abilities to know yourself, pleasure yourself, to challenge yourself and grow.

I am sure as you read this that you are clamoring for more specificity, some description of the actual gameplay. However, it would give you little idea of what the game would be like for you. It’s a highly individualized and personal experience, calibrated by machine learning (and emphatically offline-only so that you need never worry about your privacy).

And, as Felix also pointed out, if I described my experience, this would no longer be a review. It would be porn. Which I did write, in case you’re curious, but you’ll have to follow me on Twitter to get the link. 

So, I will try to tell you what will be relevant to your decision to buy the game. I can tell you that I learned things about myself that maybe would have taken me decades to learn otherwise, if I ever did. 

I have never felt better in my whole life. 

And lest you worry that I have left the messiness of human companionship behind, I am actually more open, more honest, more brave and optimistic about the humans around me than I ever was before. You can @ mention Felix on Twitter if you don’t believe me. 

It’s also not a strictly solo game, though I do recommend trying out the solo experience for its impressive personalization. So, whether you are happily single or in long-term polygamy or anywhere in between, the Black Box has something to offer you. 

I can’t tell you any more, lest I ruin any surprises. Well, except that I can tell you that the Black Box loves surprises. 

The publishers haven’t finalized the retail price yet, but it looks like it will clock in right between a console and a budget gaming rig. Remember that it won’t play any other games, or integrate with any other hardware, for security and privacy. 

But, it’s perhaps better to compare the price to a sex therapist, in which case it’s comparable to three to ten hours of therapy, depending on the rate.

And its good for hundreds upon hundreds of hours of ‘play time’. 

Totally worth it. 11/10, would recommend. 

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Part 5: The Win Condition, The Black Box

Chapter 26: The Assertion

John was on the phone with his boss again. For better or worse, he was not playing a game with Arya this time. 

The boss said, “I’ve got another one for you, John, this one’s a real doozy!”

Normally, John would have cringed and pretended to be fine. Instead, he took a deep breath.

“Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever said this before, but I’m trying to be more straightforward lately. I really don’t like reviewing mostly shitty games. I’d prefer if maybe half of my games were nonsense, and half were from decent studios.” John waited, biting his lip.

“Oh!” the boss said. “Honestly… wow, I feel pretty bad now. I had no idea you didn’t like it. Your reviews were just so saucy, I thought you liked that sort of thing.”

“Don’t feel bad, it’s my fault for not saying anything sooner. And you’re not wrong, I do like writing saucy reviews. I just don’t like only writing saucy reviews, y’know?”

“Totally makes sense. Yeah, let me check the list… I actually can give you one of the upcoming triple A titles, I hadn’t figured out who to give that one yet. I’m afraid I might still have more shitty titles for you than good ones for a bit as folks work through their backlogs, but I hear you loud and clear.”

“Thanks, Boss, I really appreciate it.” John was shocked that it had been that easy. He’d been sure that it take much more convincing than that.

“I appreciate you being honest! I don’t want you to hate your job, I swear. I’ll send you over the details in a sec.”

“Cool, sounds good.”

John’s boss hung up. They were always so abrupt, but John was now starting to wonder if it maybe wasn’t as personal as he’d originally thought. They reacted way better than he’d expected to his request, and had really sounded sincere. They were just… busy. John, for his part, needed to get busy writing his Black Box review. He finally knew what he was going to say.

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Part 5: The Win Condition, The Black Box

Chapter 25: Win Win

“Arya should I… should I go out and try to meet someone?” The question had been pinging around John’s head after Felix’s comment about ‘relationshippy’ things, getting louder with each passing day.

He was pacing back and forth in his kitchen, Arya sitting at the table. He once again caught himself marveling at how vigorously he was moving and yet there was no lag, no vertigo, in the AR. But, reviewer brain had been quieter lately as introspection brain had come to the forefront.

“Well, that’s up to you,” Arya said. 

That was fair. Of course it was.

“But… won’t you be…”

“Jealous? No, of course not! I just want you to be satisfied. It’s my—” she put up her arms in a robot pose and her voice took on a digital tone, “— prime directive.”

“Hm. Okay. I’m just still not sure if I want to or not. Maybe I just feel like I should? I don’t know…” He really was happy, now, much happier than he’d been in any relationship prior. Yet, he also knew that any relationship that he opted into in the future would be very different than his previous ones.

“Sounds like you’re on the right track,” Arya said. “Why don’t you keep going?”

“Okay, um… I guess I do know. I really do want to be in a relationship again. But not just any relationship I… I know what I want, now.”

“What do you want?”

“I want someone who… accepts me for who I am. Who doesn’t judge what I like or don’t like, who… cares what feels good to me and what doesn’t. Not just with sex but with, y’know, most things. And I’d do the same for them, of course, I think I’ve learned… how to do that much better, now. They’d have to be the sort of person who cares about my goals and… who has goals for me to support.”

Arya smiled. “That last part sounds like exactly why you should go and look for someone. I don’t really have goals for you to support. Just the—” she did her little robot dance again, “—prime directive.”

“I guess I’m just… afraid I’ll never find someone like that, y’know?” Everyone that John had ever known had some pretty serious sexual dysfunction, he was realizing, except for Felix. But, Felix was almost a case in point for John’s fear — he and John had a great thing going, and it was the most seen that John had ever felt by another human. At the same time, the very thing that made Felix so able to see him — Felix’s incredibly open sexuality — also made Felix not inclined towards ‘relationshippy’ things.

“I do know,” Arya said. “It’s actually part of why I was made. You heard my creator’s hypothesis. Maybe, something like me can help people learn how to be better to each other.”

John realized something and found himself grinning like an idiot.

“What? What are you smiling about?” Arya said.

“I think I just found a bug in your code,” John said.

“Oh yeah?”

“You just said your prime directive was my satisfaction, but you just contradicted yourself. You said, ‘something like me can help people learn how to be better to each other’. THAT is your prime directive. That’s your goal. It’s not just about my satisfaction.”

A look of true thoughtfulness came over Arya’s face, and then she broke into a smile just as wide as John’s. “I guess you’re right. It’s nice to feel part of something bigger. So, in a way, my goal for you to support is…”

“For me to go out and find someone.”

“Win win,” Arya said.

“Wait, is this the win condition?” John said. “For me to get a girlfriend? Or… a boyfriend?”

Arya looked thoughtful again. “No… I don’t think so. I think it’s just… you knowing that you can. Knowing what you want.”

“So… I won?”

“You won!”

“You’re not going to shut off or anything, are you?” John could imagine her winding down in some forlorn declaration of ‘you don’t need me anymore’ and the very thought pained him.

“Not unless you want me to. But, I wouldn’t be offended if you put me to dream for a while. Or if you unplugged me, even.”

John was relieved. He did expect that he’d visit with Arya less if he were in a relationship, but he’d never want to totally stop. “What if… I want to bring my someone to you?”

Arya practically bounced with excitement. “I mean, it’s up to you but… I’d really love that. There’s all sorts of games we can play with another person — or people! Men, women, gender-queer, I love all of it. But, of course, it’s up to you.”

John considered, then nodded. “I definitely want them to like you. It’s important to me.”

“In that case, then do I have a promo code for you,” Arya crooned. “Pull out your phone, big boy.”

What came in the mail two days later was simple box. The top was labeled ‘for multiplayer fun’. While Arya was dreaming, John cheated and peeked inside. He found another headset and set of sensors, which he expected would pair with his existing console. He noticed that it had a tag on it and this one was blank. So, he dug out an old gold gel pen that his niece had left over once, and wrote on it himself ‘for when you find someone’. He set the box on one of his display shelves, next to his collector set of Monster Hunter figurines.

With the box was a black envelop made of thick paper, labeled ‘open me’ on the front in gold. The letter inside was handwritten on creamy paper and read,

“You are cordially invited to a banquet as thanks for your dedicated work in reviewing the Black Box and as congratulations for finding your own win-win. Enclosed you will find an SD card which will allow your Black Box to record a message for you, to be played during the celebration, if you so choose.”

Following that were the details of the time and location, and at the end it was signed in a flourish, “the Madame”.

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