During what would soon come to be known as “The Click,” Leila Deacon was dozing on the hard tile floor of her cell.

She had no way of knowing that, in a single instant, almost all of the Bureau-issued chastity devices in the country had suddenly unlocked themselves.

The only thought that ran through her mind when her chains suddenly released was, This, I don’t need.

“I didn’t do anything!” she shouted, hoping that there was someone monitoring her cell to hear her.

She raised her hands in the air, leaving the plate of steel over her pussy where it belonged, though there was nothing to hold it there.

“It wasn’t me, I didn’t break it! I didn’t steal any pleasure!”

Minutes passed without an answer.

Eventually, Leila rested her head back on her arm and began to drift off again.

She was somewhere between sleep and waking, no longer certain whether the looseness around her hips was a dream, when the cell’s outer door opened.

“I didn’t—” she started again.

“Technically, you kinda did,” answered a voice that did nothing to help convince her she was awake.

“Kristen?” Leila asked, heart suddenly pounding with nightmare ferocity.

That voice felt so good. And nothing that felt good could possibly be here for any reason other than to be used against her.

The overhead lights switched on, and Leila squinted against the glare.

Most of her cell was made of steel walls, but there was a sliding wall of bulletproof glass that locked into place between her and the side of the room with the door and the light switch.

The blurry figure of Kristen pulled her hand away from the switch and placed it on the glass between them.

“Hey,” she said, with a breathless smile.

It had to be a test, a punishment, or an illusion.

Kristen was still in her short trainee’s tunic, with the outlines of her chastity device and pleasure-proof pasties showing through the tight, clingy fabric.

Officers were supposed to have an air of aloof authority around people still serving their time in that uniform.

Maybe that was the test.

It wasn’t easy for Leila to demonstrate what a qualified officer she still was, when she was naked, stiff, disoriented, and holding her own chastity plate in place by hand — but she was damn well going to try.

“Give me the update, trainee,” she prompted.

“Seriously?” Kristen shook her head and laughed.

She actually laughed. Sure, it sounded like a crazed stress laugh, but still, it was only a few weeks ago that Leila could have spanked this upstart new girl for such disrespect. In fact, she would have been required to.

“Okay then, debtor,” Kristen responded in kind, removing her hand from the glass and sitting down on the floor across from Leila. “The update is, that woman you helped hack into the Bureau server? Artemis? Well, apparently, she’s been putting that access to use.”

Leila listened in silence while Kristen explained the mass shutdown of the chastity devices, and the public announcement of Privalock, the new private company touting itself as an alternative to the Bureau of Pleasure Control.

A tightly wound knot that had sat for years in Leila’s stomach suddenly unraveled, and she grasped at the ends, trying to pull them back together before the structure of her being, everything she had ever hung on the strength of that knot, had a chance to collapse.

It was bad enough being locked in here, staring at the insurmountable debt on her point counter, knowing that she might never again eat solid food or wear clothes or touch her pussy, because she had risked the destruction of the Bureau and civilization as she knew it.

It was so much worse to know that she had actually caused the destruction of the Bureau and civilization as she knew it.

She couldn’t even imagine the pandemonium that must be going on outside these walls, with everyone suddenly able to touch themselves and each other with no regulation at all. At best, nobody would be working. Services of all kinds would grind to a halt. At least a few people had probably already died because of Leila, accounting for jobs like emergency medicine.

She wouldn’t be surprised if there were hundreds, thousands more killing themselves with exposure and dehydration and accidents, simply fucking themselves to death in riotous orgies in the streets.

#

“Sir, have you decided what you’re going to do about the Click?” Zach called out.

The man shuffled quickly past Zach, avoiding the flyer in his outstretched hand.

“Ma’am, do you have a moment to talk about a pleasure management option you might not have considered?”

She didn’t even look at him.

Zach sighed, tacked yet another flyer to a conspicuous tree, and studied it for a moment.

YOU DON’T HAVE TO GO BACK

The need for chastity is a LIE.

Director Daimler of the Bureau of Pleasure Control is a HYPOCRITE who gets off DAILY. He’s the one who needs YOU to hold HIS life together, not the other way around.

Pleasure deprivation disrupts our natural tendencies toward cooperation and self-regulation. It tricks us into believing that we cannot be trusted. That we need more of the same discipline that cut us off from our best instincts in the first place.

You CAN own your pleasure, AND be a good person, AND meet your goals.

Come to The Mill on Saturday at seven to learn about how you can make the Click a turning point in your life, and our history.

Zach re-read it three times through, still unable to see what anyone would find unenticing about it, before moving on.

Most of the streets were eerily empty today. People had shut themselves in their homes, either afraid of the volatility in the air, or enjoying their bodies in privacy for the first time in their adult lives, or both.

The only places that seemed to be busy were the areas surrounding the Privalock signup office, and Bureau headquarters. Zach was currently assigned to the latter.

It was bustling here, but no less eerie.

There were lines spilling out the door and around the block of the building itself. Every restaurant, bar, and coffee shop within an hour’s walk was overflowing with people looking for a comfortable place to wait for a lull in the Bureau’s wait time. The staff of all those businesses, usually at least a few hands short, were scrambling to figure out interim policies for accepting points from devices that were no longer attached to their owners.

Zach and a few of his rebel friends had started at the edges of this clump of foot traffic, hoping to quietly divert a few stragglers before they could get inside to sign the new Bureau consent forms.

As the day had worn on, the lack of attention they’d attracted — either good or bad — had driven them to shout their message ever louder and closer to the center.

Who would have thought free, unlimited orgasms would be such a hard sell?

Zach was close enough now to look up at Bureau headquarters and wonder if Kristen was still inside. He wondered when she had last felt pleasure, and whether she had found what she was looking for there.

The moment when he’d pulled her toward the breach in the wall, toward freedom, stuck in his mind. She had dug in her heels so hard. She really, truly believed there was someone in that building worth going back for — the same someone who had literally tried to steal her senses.

He should have taken it as a sign of how hard it was going to be, trying to convince anyone of anything.

Not that knowing would have stopped him.

“Miss?” he called out, and was almost startled when a young woman turned her head to acknowledge him.

“Are you with that new company?” she asked.

“I’m… with a group of people who want to change the world,” Zach answered.

“Uh-huh,” said the woman, squinting at the flyers in his hands.

He passed her one.

Zach had wanted to put some kind of rebel insignia on them that the public could learn to recognize, something to connect the different messages they tried to disseminate as coming from the same place.

Carmen had decided that anonymity was safer, for now. As long as the rebels could be mistaken for Privalock representatives at a glance, they might be able to piggyback off of whatever immunity Privalock had managed to negotiate for themselves.

The rebel team poaching outside the Privalock signup office were using the opposite strategy, dressing in tight gray to resemble the Bureau until they could get people alone to talk.

That is, if they ever did get anyone alone to talk. Zach hoped they were having better luck than he was.

“You believe all this?” the woman with the flyer asked, pointing at it.

Her tone was suspicious, but not dismissive.

By her age, Zach guessed that she’d only had her chastity device for maybe a year or two before the Click. Maybe she hadn’t yet forgotten life without it, or come to associate the memory of freedom with the embarrassment of adolescence.

“I do,” Zach answered. “How about you?”

The woman pursed her lips. “I don’t know. It’s interesting and all, but it seems a little too good to be true. And reckless. It feels… like fumbling around in a dark room, drinking things out of random bottles, not knowing if it’s a bar or an aisle of cleaning supplies. I mean, sure, I don’t know for a fact that uncontrolled pleasure is bad for me or society or whatever, but I sure don’t know for a fact that it isn’t, either.”

“I can understand that,” Zach agreed. “What’s your name?”

“Sasha.”

“Sasha. I’m Zach. Do you mind, could we…?”

He nodded over to a low brick wall around a decorative planter, far enough away from the nearest restaurant entrance for a private conversation, but still in plain view of the crowd.

“Sure.” Sasha followed him with only one faintly apprehensive glance down at the lack of chains around his hips.

Not for the first time, Zach gave quiet thanks for his pretty face and petite frame, in spite of how much teasing they’d won him from other guys in high school. Striking up conversations with women he’d just met about their sexual habits, while he was unlocked, no less, was an extremely delicate task. It would have verged on impossible if he were even a little bit more intimidating to look at.

“I hope you don’t mind my asking, and feel free not to answer,” he prefaced, “but does that mean you haven’t… at all, since the Click?”

Sasha blushed and folded her hands in her lap.

“That would be illegal,” she half-answered.

“Would it?” asked Zach. “It’s an unprecedented situation.”

“I just… I just want to be safe,” said Sasha.

“Of course,” Zach agreed. “Everyone’s trying to be safe from something. Getting in trouble. Missing out on something important.”

Sasha wrung her hands in her lap, tightly enough that Zach knew he’d struck a chord.

“What if I… do it,” Sasha whispered, “and I have an accident and need to go to a hospital and explain myself?”

“What kind of accident?” asked Zach. “I mean, unless you’re playing with something that could get stuck, there’s not much—”

“What if I go in to get re-locked, and they can just tell that I haven’t been denied long enough to match my records?”

“They can’t,” Zach assured her. “Not with that kind of precision, especially not with women. And even if they could, they’re probably too busy trying to relock people in bulk to give anyone too hard a time.”

“Yes, I know, but what if?” Sasha insisted, and then let out a shaky sigh. “Why can’t there just be an easy answer? I do what I’m told. I’m good at doing what I’m told. And now, all of a sudden, I have this choice I never asked for, and I’m supposed to know what’s best, all by myself?”

“A choice between the Bureau and Privalock?” Zach tested the waters.

Sasha shrugged. “Yeah, but also the choice of what to do every second in the meantime. I’ve been trying to pretend I still can’t… you know. Because if I could, how would I know what to do with that?”

“Do you know what you like at Bureau visits?” Zach asked. “That would be a good starting point, if you wanted to try.”

“I don’t just mean how to do, you know, the physical part,” said Sasha. “I mean, where do you put it in your day? How often is normal, when you can have as much as you want? Three times a day, like eating? Is that too much? Before the Bureau, did people only do that kind of thing in bed at night? Or could you just go into a bathroom anywhere, with anyone, any time you want?”

Zach tried not to interpret this too presumptuously as a come-on.

“Does it really matter what people thought was normal before the Bureau?” he asked softly. “Whether you decide your best bet is to go back to the Bureau, or to Privalock, or look into other possibilities, the whole point is to make things better than what existed before, isn’t it?”

Sasha nodded, unconvinced.

“But…?” Zach prompted playfully.

“But what if I start, without an officer there to monitor me, and then I can’t stop, ever?!” Sasha blurted out.

Her eyes were so wide that Zach could see himself in them.

“That is a scary thought,” he acknowledged.

Sasha nodded earnestly.

“What if,” Zach proposed, “you had a friend to keep an eye on you instead? Someone who promised to stop you if you couldn’t stop yourself after, say, an hour? And then, if it came to that, they’d clean you up and deliver you to the Bureau without a word about what you’d been up to. That way, you could find out your limits, safely. No danger of dying of thirst or anything. Worst case scenario, you end up exactly where you were already planning to go, only now you’ll know why you need to be there. Either way, you get to stop worrying.”

Sasha blinked. She moistened her lips.

#

The restaurant had several single-user bathrooms, each one nice and roomy with a full-length door.

Zach leaned against the inside of one of these doors, with the stopwatch app at the ready on his phone, while Sasha arranged herself on top of the sink counter and pulled her panties down over her Mary Janes.

Tentatively, she pulled up the skirt of her dress, the floral kind people wore to outdoor concerts in spring. She spent a few seconds seeming to look for a comfortable angle to reach under it privately, but soon gave up, smiled shyly at Zach, and pulled it all the way up over her hips.

She hovered her fingers over her bare pussy for a few seconds, maybe telling herself that she could still back out. Then she lowered them to touch.

On contact, she gasped, already surprised by how good it felt.

Zach started the clock.

Instinct, pre-locking experience, or a combination of both took over effortlessly. Sasha stroked herself up and down her slit, once, twice, three times, and then went straight for her clit, pressing down with three fingers and working them in a firm circle.

“Oh, god,” she breathed. “It’s too good, it’s too… it’s too….”

She cried out, thighs clenching around her own hand, ankles spasming out at odd angles.

“Thirty-nine seconds down,” Zach informed her, smiling to himself as he watched her muscles relax out of that quick first orgasm.

“I feel…” Sasha panted, fighting against the bliss on her own face. “I feel like I should be embarrassed by that.”

“You were deprived,” Zach reminded her. “And nobody’s getting anything out of you taking one pace or another. This is all for you. There’s nothing wrong with it.”

“Okay,” Sasha seemed vaguely content to take his word for it, for the moment.

“Do you think you could stop now?” asked Zach.

A flicker of disappointment crossed Sasha’s face. “Yeah, I guess so. We should probably… is there a line forming outside?”

“No, I’m just asking if you could,” Zach explained. “If you wanted to. Do you want to stop now?”

Sasha thought for a moment.

“I think… I think I want to try for a slower one first,” she answered.

“Whenever you’re ready, then,” said Zach. “You’ve got plenty of time left.”

Slowly, Sasha returned to her soft, up and down stroking motion, thighs trembling lightly with each pass. After a long while, she shifted into a much lighter, slower circle around the region of her clit, just barely touching it while skimming the folds below and the tuft of pubic hair above.

Her moans started out restrained, conscious of the restaurant full of strangers outside the door, but as her awareness flagged, they grew louder, more constant and insistent, almost as if she were begging her own body for something it held just out of reach.

About seventeen minutes in, she turned on the sink beside her, ran her fingers under the water, and returned them to her pussy with newly softened friction.

“If you could use any help,” Zach approached the subject cautiously, “I’m at your disposal.”

“I… um…” she groaned, “I’m so sensitive….”

“No pressure,” said Zach. “Just seemed like you could use something softer and wetter than your hand.”

He let his tongue stretch a little farther forward in his mouth as he spoke, making its existence obvious in both sight and sound.

Sasha’s own tongue played across her lips in response. She nodded and beckoned him to her.

Zach double-checked the lock on the door behind him and joined her at the sink counter, planting his hands on either side of her hips for stability.

Keeping his eyes on hers, watching for any change in their intense but nervous agreement, he sank down between her legs and touched his tongue to the extra wet spot she’d already made with her hand.

She took in a trembling breath and leaned her head back.

He drank the droplets of tap water from her skin, barely touching the skin itself beneath them.

Her thighs fell open around him, trusting that his tongue was not something to be protected against, and allowed him to reach between the frontmost folds of her pussy to touch the hood of her clit.

He lapped at it so softly that the thin layer of skin didn’t move at all over the hard little structure inside, but it was clear that Sasha could feel him, almost more acutely than she could bear.

Her moans escalated further. They were an imploring sound, and Zach did his best to read whether she was imploring him for more or less. Some gasps seemed to verge on pain, but when he pulled further away, she put her hand on the back of his neck to urge him closer.

She slapped her other hand onto the mirror behind her and scratched at the glass, rocking back and forth frantically for several seconds before groaning out a second, warbling release.

Zach crouched back on his heels and stroked Sasha’s shin while she recovered.

“Thank you,” she muttered.

“No problem,” said Zach. “How about now? Could you stop now?”

Sasha nodded vigorously. “That was everything I needed!”

“And could you not stop now?”

“Huh?” Sasha asked dreamily.

“You still have almost half an hour left,” he told her, checking his phone. “Could you keep going, if you had to?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Try,” he suggested. “You don’t have to, but I think, when you come down, you’ll be glad you did.”

More hesitantly than ever, Sasha began stroking herself once more. Her every motion, from her face to her hands to her legs, lay somewhere between pleasure and wincing.

She stayed that way for several minutes, but not nearly enough to run up against the one-hour window.

Sasha tugged on Zach’s hair, cueing him to assist her again, but then pushed him away just as quickly when he tried.

“I can’t,” she said, with apology in her voice.

“That’s okay!” said Zach. “It was an experiment, remember? This is a result.”

“I’ve never not been horny before,” Sasha murmured. “Not since I learned what horny was. I’ve never had too much. I could never afford it. I didn’t even know it was possible. I didn’t know it was so easy.”

Zach gently kissed her knee.

“Now you do,” he said.

#

“But we are working on putting a lid back on the situation, right?” Leila asked urgently.

“You could say that,” said Kristen, with a sharp exhale. More stress laughter. “I’ve spent the last six straight hours relocking people and reconstructing their files on the new server, one at a time. Everyone’s been working on it, from the newest trainees up to Director Daimler himself. I finally convinced him, well, not him directly, but I convinced Mrs. Daimler that we need all hands on deck right now, including yours.”

“They’re letting me help clean up my own mess?” Leila tried to guess at the most reasonable, punitive way of letting her out of her cell.

“Shh.” Kristen gestured sharply for quiet.

The audacity of this trainee. On a better day, Leila could really have enjoyed it.

“That’s how Commander Hawkins and Senior Officer Kitterage have decided to see it,” Kristen whispered. “But Director and Mrs. Daimler still don’t know how this happened, or that it had anything to do with you.”

“Why would security and senior officers cover for me?” asked Leila.

“At first, they were covering for themselves. They thought they could hide the breach completely,” Kristen explained. “They’ve only had a few crazy busy hours to think since this whole thing blew up, and now… they’ve realized they need your skills.”

“To reinstall devices and reconstruct files?” asked Leila.

Kristen shook her head.

“There’s more.”

#

“That’s it, baby,” said Calvin, hovering behind the cameraman he had brought in for the occasion.

Artemis didn’t know the cameraman. She wasn’t even sure whether he was a pro hired for the day, or just someone who happened to own a handheld and owe Calvin a favor.

She didn’t know the woman who was in the spa tub beside her either — the one who was currently running a warm, pulsating waterjet over her pussy — though she’d heard her introduce herself as Evie.

There hadn’t been much time for small talk, as Calvin rushed them all through an abbreviated tour of the massive, still mostly unfinished Privalock facility, and then instructed them on setting up the latest shoot he’d envisioned.

The cameraman had to stand very close, at a carefully calculated angle, to capture only the tub, the two women, and the view of the city behind them, without any tarps or scaffolding getting in the way.

“A little louder,” Calvin directed.

“Aren’t we going to redub this part anyway?” Artemis asked, irritably.

It was difficult to focus on both the waterjet and his voice at the same time. The waterjet was definitely the more enjoyable of the two stimuli, but both could be annoying when they were competing for her attention.

“We’re keeping all options open,” said Calvin. “Louder.”

“I mean, you keep talking over it anyway, so…”

“Just moan for me,” Calvin snapped. “For like thirty seconds. Make out with each other for another thirty like you just can’t help yourself, and then turn to the camera and say the line. We’ll take some inserts and edit it together from there.”

Artemis followed his instructions, hoping that if she did it precisely enough, she wouldn’t have to hear his voice again for a precious couple of minutes.

Evie ran the jet in skillful circles, all over the area that Artemis’s chastity belt usually covered. On its current setting, the jet was made up of dozens of mini-jets, creating a light, tingling, all-over massage. The pressure was low enough that there was no risk of hurting her, but also no feeling of leverage, nothing firm to really rub against.

Artemis tried to savor the delicious, glittery feeling for its own sake, without expectation, the same way she had trained herself to savor sensations when she was fooling around with her belt still on. Every bit of pleasure she got, she channeled into her moans, while mentally counting off the seconds.

On thirty, she brought her lips to Evie’s.

Evie’s were soft, and glossed with something that tasted like peaches.

Artemis savored them too, and twisted around on the bench of the tub so that she could reach for Evie’s breasts.

Artemis and Evie were both completely naked, no devices or pasties or anything. The tub they were sitting in was only filled to just below their laps, to give the camera the best possible view, but after a couple of rehearsals playing around with the waterjet, they were both wet all the way up to their necks, with the under layers of their damp hair sticking to their necks.

Evie’s light blonde curls were even softer this way. Her skin was so smooth, and her nipples were long and responsive, to the point where Artemis had trouble imagining them ever having been successfully contained.

After what was probably more than thirty seconds, Artemis turned her head away from Evie and gave the camera a big smile.

“Still not sure what pleasure management provider is right for you?” she asked. “Reserve your tickets now, and join us at the first annual Oh! Gala. Every name worth knowing in the field of pleasure management will be there, ready to answer your questions and show you what they’ve got, with live,” she gasped, “hands-on,” she gasped again, with less control this time, “demonstrations!”

Nervous impulses were firing off under the waterjet, muscles contracting deep in Artemis’s pelvis. Even under the ruthlessly gentle ministrations of the waterjet, she was on her way to an orgasm.

Artemis could count on her fingers the number of orgasms she’d had in the decade and a half since her locking ceremony.

And this would be her first one since that day in at the Bureau she’d rather forget, the one when she’d had to strongarm that poor, disaffected Officer Deacon.

A few more seconds, and that wouldn’t have to be her clearest memory of release anymore.

“That,” Calvin whispered, watching her, unblinking. “That, right there, that’s beautiful. And… cut.”

He stepped in front of the cameraman, grabbed Artemis by the upper arm, and pulled her forcefully to her feet, pressing the front plate of her chastity belt back into place.

“I told you,” he murmured in her ear, a sharp curl of a smile confirming that he knew exactly how little of her acting was acting. “After we’re in business.”

“We basically are in-”

“After we’re in business. Not before.”

#

“A pleasure gala?” Leila asked incredulously. “And we’re actually legitimizing this thing with our participation?”

“You’re not the first person to say those exact words in that exact tone,” said Kristen. “But the reality is, no matter how much we scramble, we’re not going to be able to put everything back the way it was. Not any time soon. Maybe not ever. The Bureau’s best chance at retaining as much power as possible right now is to convince people to keep choosing us as their ‘pleasure management provider.’ That’s what Privalock’s started calling the industry.”

“We’re not supposed to be an industry,” Leila pointed out. “We’re supposed to be a government agency. We’re supposed to be able to enforce the rules for everyone’s benefit. How the fuck would we get people to choose to go back into chastity?”

Kristen flicked her lovely brown eyes down toward the plate that Leila was still holding to her pussy.

“It’s a little different when you’re already locked in a box,” Leila pointed out, waving a hand at her cell. “I mean, how would we convince most people, average people, the ones out there in the world where no one’s watching…”

“How do we bring in new people when they turn nineteen?” Kristen countered somberly. “Everyone is in a box. It’s all one big box. People still can’t get jobs or adult education without proof of chastity. They’re still going to need to demonstrate their restraint with high point totals to get desirable placements. They’ll still need to spend points on things other than sex. Entertainments, sweets, alcohol. None of that has changed. The Bureau just isn’t the only entity issuing devices and points anymore. So, now we have to be the best one instead.”

The comfortable, familiar knot in Leila’s stomach started to wind itself back into place. This wasn’t quite anarchy. Not everything was gone.

“We have the advantage of being what people are used to,” said Kristen, “but that means we also have the disadvantage of being associated with all their complaints. Privalock hasn’t had the chance to upset anyone yet. And until today, the Bureau hasn’t had any reason to care about public satisfaction. That’s where we have catching up to do.”

“But that’s the problem!” Leila raised her voice farther than was necessary to make an impression on Kristen, realizing that she was yelling at whoever outside this room had already conducted this conversation without her. “We motivate people by restricting satisfaction. If we have to keep people satisfied to keep them under Bureau control, there is no control.”

“Leila.” Kristen touched the glass again. It looked like she wanted to run sympathetic fingers through her hair. “What did they do to you in here?”

“What do you mean?” Leila rubbed the vicious cramp in her neck. She couldn’t fix that cramp, any more than she could fix any of the gaping holes in the plan Kristen had apparently come here to describe to her.

“You’re the one who taught me that there’s more to pleasure control than saying ‘no,’” said Kristen. “You and Professor Lawrence, of course, but mostly you. You taught me how to tease, how to encourage, how to punish people in ways that make them thank you for real, instead of because they have to. How to look for those perfect moments to bend the rules and guide someone to a discovery they wouldn’t have made in a lifetime of playing with themselves. For fuck’s sake, one session with you was enough to make me sign up to live here. I shouldn’t have been surprised to find out that you’re the most popular, most requested officer here.”

Warmth started in Leila’s chest, followed by the weight of where she knew this must be going.

“And that’s the skill of mine the senior officers have decided they still need?” she asked.

Kristen nodded. “You’re an expert at the most appealing parts of what we have to offer. They’re putting you in charge of creating our whole gala showcase.”

Something about the impenetrable glass wall separating Leila from the rest of the world was making her feel dangerously careless. Professor Lawrence probably would have said she was below the motivation zone.

“Not to be crass,” said Leila, with every intention of being crass, “but what’s in it for me?”

Kristen raised an incredulous eyebrow. “Um, it’s a chance to show everyone exactly what you’ve been saying all along? They want you to help save the Bureau while shaping it into something more compassionate, just like you wanted!”

“They want me to help shape its image into something more compassionate,” said Leila. “They want me to help them lie to people about how much the Bureau wants to change, long enough to get them to lock themselves back up. And then what? They throw me back in here, while they get back to cruelty as usual, and wait for the next big pushback, which might actually destroy everything for good?” She rubbed her neck again. “Does anyone out there have any idea how big a mess we’ve made?”

Kristen let this question hang, and did not presume to answer it.

“They’re not just going to put you back here,” she said instead.

“Oh. Let me guess,” Leila sighed. “If I help on this project, maybe they’ll let you visit me from time to time?”

Kristen’s beautiful face screwed up with hurt, and then hardened.

“Excuse me, but do you worship the Bureau and want to keep it all-powerful at all costs, or do you hate it and want to watch it burn?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Leila scoffed. “I’m being disrespectful, aren’t I? Better tack another few points onto my debt.”

“I’m not asking for your point calculation, I’m asking because you’re fucking confusing!” snapped Kristen.

“I don’t know!” Leila tossed her hands in the air. “Neither. Both, maybe.”

“Well, while you figure it out, do you want me to keep defending them, so that you can keep shitting on me for doing the job you recruited me for? The one I’ve stayed in, every day, because of you? Or would you prefer I spend that time actually explaining the deal you’re getting?”

Leila felt herself retreat almost meekly inside herself, the way she could remember doing at the hands of a good officer when she had been only a subject.

“Explain,” she answered.

“Okay. So.” Kristen took a breath. “They’re offering you a path out of debt and back to officer, and here’s how it goes. You sign one of the new consent agreements to give the Bureau jurisdiction over your pleasure management, and let me reinstall your device and put it on the new network. You don’t ask about switching or try to negotiate the terms. You will submit to fifty points of debt recovery punishment every day without fail, until I graduate and become a full officer. At that time, if you’ve been good, obedient, and respectful, and you’ve worked hard to help the Bureau prepare for the gala and given it whatever other support it needs in this challenging time, the Bureau will cancel whatever’s left of your debt and allow you to start over with a clean slate as a trainee. My trainee.”

Leila hovered somewhere between laughing and crying as she absorbed this.

“That’s it,” said Kristen. “That’s the deal. That’s what we get, from the system you love-hate. If you wanted something else… I fucking wish you’d told me sooner.”

Even with so little dignity left to her, Leila’s pride chafed against submitting to someone she herself had trained. Or, partially trained. And yet, she had to admit, it was a more generous offer than she’d dared hoped for.

If she was honest with herself, she’d been completely ready to settle for those occasional visits from Kristen, while she served out an endless sentence here behind glass.

That was why she’d expected that that to be the offer, and why the thought of it scared her so much: it would have worked.

There had been days in this cell when she would have pulled out all her hair to have someone, anyone, come in and chat with her about the weather for five minutes.

For the chance to be close to Kristen, her soft-hearted, sharp-eyed, responsibly unruly protegee, the person who had dislodged her from a rut of apathy she’d come to believe was permanent… she didn’t dare imagine the upper limits on what she would do for that.

Even if their visits would always be on opposite sides of glass with their pussies locked out of reach, she would perform any dance the Bureau asked of her to keep them coming.

“I’ll sign,” said Leila.

With a heavy smile, Kristen placed a tablet in the cell’s food slot and pushed it through to Leila’s side.

Leila skimmed the agreement, just enough to know that it was more or less what Kristen had described, and scrawled her name with one finger at the bottom.

A green light flashed on the side of her chastity device, next to the catastrophically negative point counter, indicating that it was in installation mode.

With a deep breath, Leila did what she’d been trying to do for the last several hours. She unreeled the chains, wrapped them around her hips, and touched them to the receptors. This time, they locked into place, and then reeled themselves firmly back to the ideal, tight fit.

She demonstrated that it was secure, without needing to be told, by tugging fruitlessly on the front panel for Kristen to see.

Kristen nodded and pointed at the tablet. “The next page is your punishment menu for the day.”

Leila scrolled to it and perused her options.

Choosing fifty points’ worth of punishment was harder than she remembered. For a moment, she wondered if the point values had gone down, but then she realized what was different. She wasn’t being offered any points to star in a cautionary PSA. The video recording of her session was to be used for supervisory reference only.

Naturally. The Bureau had decided to bury her infraction instead of making an example of it. Having her tell her story would mean telling the world exactly how she had unwittingly forced them into allowing Privalock to exist.

This wasn’t going to be easy.

While she debated between implements of pain, she glanced up at Kristen. “The daily punishments… are you going to be the one administering these too?”

“I’m going to be handling everything to do with you,” Kristen answered. “It was my suggestion, so they’re letting it be my fault if you fail.”

Fingers feeling slightly lighter, Leila made her selections, and passed the tablet back.

Kristen looked them over, nodded, and tapped her ID card, her trainee ID card, to the sensor by Leila’s high security cell.

By whatever special authority she’d been granted, it opened.

Once there was nothing but air between them, Leila stepped forward, put her arms tentatively around Kristen’s shoulders, and then slumped her full weight against her.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she whispered.

Kristen hugged her. “Me too,” she said. “And I’m sorry. I’m really sorry about the interrogation. I didn’t know what was going to—”

“That wasn’t your fault,” Leila stopped her. “You couldn’t have stopped it, any more than a needle can choose to stop a piercing.”

She kissed Kristen all along the cheek and up to her mouth, extending the moment of human contact for as long as possible before their new roles could take firm root.

Kristen kissed her back, passionately, but not indefinitely. After several seconds, she pulled away.

“Come on. We should get started.”

#

Kristen led Leila to their assigned visitor room, ordered her to bend over the steel table, and started the camera.

It was all she could do to keep a cool, professional demeanor. Not to cry and plead for Leila to keep absolving her. Not to hurl more accusations at her for her part in bringing them here. Not to shower her with promises she couldn’t keep, about how nothing would ever hurt her again. Not to leap in the air and whoop with joy. Parts of her wanted to do all these things.

There was so much about this moment that Kristen had dreamed of.

She had Leila back in her life.

She was allowed to call her Leila.

She was getting to turn the tables, take the lead, prove that she could even out to be at least Leila’s equal in the grand scheme of things.

She was helping Leila get what she wanted, helping her crawl out of a corner instead of forcing her into one, the way she’d been made to do at the interrogation.

There was a savage part of Kristen that had also always wanted to spank Leila’s hard little ass just to find out whether it was capable of jiggling, and whether her equally stony face was capable of flinching over something as trivial as physical discomfort, when she wasn’t on drugs.

She wanted the intimacy of taking Leila to the same vulnerable place Leila had taken her on the day they met.

Now that she was here, it felt like an enormous responsibility.

Almost enormous enough to crush the part of Kristen that wanted it. But not quite.

#

“Please state the method you chose for the first phase of your punishment today,” Kristen directed.

“Ten strokes with Cane One,” Leila recited for the camera, while Kristen went to retrieve the narrow wooden implement from behind the wall panels.

Leila thought she might be able to hear her former trainee’s hands shaking with uncertainty as she closed the panel again.

If so, this might be an unusually gentle caning. Or it might be a clumsy disaster that bruised bones it wasn’t meant to touch.

“Count them down,” Kristen ordered, the shake almost imperceptible in her voice. “And tell me why you deserve them. No repetition.”

Smack.

That first blow was neither timid nor clumsy. The muscle memory Kristen must have developed in class shone through, inflicting blinding pain, localized entirely to the softest of Leila’s limited soft tissue.

“Ten!” Leila scrambled to unclench her jaw and count. “I deserve to be punished for not reporting Artemis the moment I saw her where she wasn’t supposed to be!”

Smack.

“Nine! I deserve to be punished for losing track of my keycard in that bar with her.”

Smack.

“Eight! I deserve to be punished for letting her fuck me in the back room.”

Smack.

“Seven. I deserve to be punished for wanting to believe her.”

“Believe her about what?” Kristen asked, pausing the swing of the cane.

“About being able to make do with kissing and fingers and asses! With pantomime and frustration and breaking things!” said Leila. “I wanted her to be right. I wanted there to be something we could have in private, something we could control, that could be enough.”

Kristen hovered behind her, and with every second, the anticipation of the next blow grew worse.

“I deserve to be punished!” Leila repeated desperately, pleading for her to get on with it.

At last, smack.

“Six!” Leila cried. “I deserve to be punished for going looking for validation from strangers that day in the first place!”

Smack.

“Five! I deserve to be punished for thinking my doubts and my discomfort were more important than all the good the Bureau does!”

Leila couldn’t even tell whether her own words were earnest or hiding vicious sarcasm, only that they needed to be screamed.

Smack.

“Four! I deserve to be punished for pretending to be something I’m not!”

“What’s that?” Kristen asked.

“Someone certain,” Leila croaked. “Someone in control. Someone you could trust to know what she was talking about.”

Kristen took a long breath. “For what it’s worth, I figured out it was a front within the first week. All the times I chose to stay since then… that’s really on me, too.”

“I deserve to be punished!” Leila screamed insistently. “I deserve for you to punish me!”

The next hit took longer, but fell the hardest of all.

Smack.

“Three! I deserve to be punished for tricking you into debt that first day, just to hold power over you for a few more minutes.”

Another pause.

Another smack.

“Two. I deserve to be punished for having feelings for a subordinate.”

“…Leila.”

“Please!” shouted Leila, wiping tears from her face. “Please finish it!”

Smack.

“One! I deserve to be punished for twisting and using what’s between us to protect myself, even when it hurt you.”

Kristen set the cane down on the table beside her.

“I like protecting you,” she said softly.

“I know,” Leila murmured, burrowing deep into the foggy aftermath of the pain, where it was harder for inhibition to reach. “That’s why I deserve to be punished.”

Kristen was silent for a long moment.

“Next step,” she said finally. “Lie on your back.”

#

Kristen focused quietly on following procedure to the letter as she chained Leila face-up on the steel table, with manacles connecting her wrists and ankles to its legs.

Leila watched her work, moving her limbs compliantly into place. The caning seemed to have given her some manner of catharsis, and she was much calmer now, and less prickly than she had been in her cell.

“Please state the method you chose for the remainder of your debt recovery today,” said Kristen.

“Clamp Array Two,” Leila answered. “With electrical enhancement.”

“I’m going to open your device now to apply the clamps,” Kristen announced, and tapped her badge to the device’s sensor.

The chains loosened enough for her to pull the pelvic plate away and leave it resting against Leila’s thighs.

It was the first time Kristen had ever seen Leila’s unprotected pussy. When she pulled the plate away, it took every ounce of restraint she possessed not to stroke its soft hair and pink folds.

Maybe, someday, the two of them could have the kind of visit where Kristen would get to pull that plate away to kiss Leila’s waiting clit.

The video monitoring prevented that today.

“I didn’t understand at first, why they put this option on the menu for you,” Kristen said, pulling on her latex gloves. “Genital punishment is usually for infractions driven by sexual desire, like tampering with a device. You never intended to tamper with yours. I always thought you ended up in debt through accidents, doubt, and self-preservation, not a lack of restraint. But your pussy really did make a lot of your decisions, for you, didn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Leila. “So many times.”

Kristen gently isolated Leila’s left inner labia and put the first clamp in place, toward the back end of her slit.

Leila took in a short breath when the merciless, springloaded metal pincers closed around her delicate skin.

“Do you think this will teach it a lesson?” Kristen asked with grim humor.

Leila snorted softly. “I suppose there’s an outside chance.”

Kristen pressed the button on the central console of the clamp array, the unit that all the clamps were wired into.

Leila took in a sharper breath as a mild current ran through the clamp on her lip.

“You know what’s way stranger than this punishment being on your menu?” Kristen asked, placing the next clamp opposite the first one.

“What?” asked Leila.

Kristen pushed the button to send the current through both clamps.

“The fact that you chose it,” she said. “But I have a theory about that.”

Leila waited patiently for her to elaborate.

Kristen attached the next clamp on the left, an inch or so in front of the first one, turned up the current, and pushed the button again.

Leila gasped.

“You were attracted to an orgasm substitute once before,” said Kristen. “The things you did with Artemis, you did them to feel some other kind of closeness, stimulation, intensity, knowing that you wouldn’t get to cum with her.”

Leila kept waiting, an innocent smile playing at the corners of her mouth.

Kristen placed the fourth clamp opposite the third, turned up the charge another notch, and sent the next shock.

“You can’t pay for any release while you’re in debt,” said Kristen. “Which means you’re going to be in complete denial until my graduation, and then for three more months beyond that, when you start your trainee period over again.”

“Your point?” asked Leila.

The playfulness in Leila’s voice was like music after hours of sensory deprivation. It had been so long since Kristen had heard it.

Reminding herself that she was no longer required to answer her former mentor’s questions promptly and explicitly, she took her time, sliding back the hood of Leila’s clit to place the fifth and final clamp.

Leila gasped loudly as the metal pinched into her. Her hips shifted unconsciously as her body searched for a response to the brutally targeted touch on its hungriest spot.

Kristen hadn’t even pushed the button yet.

“You’re not going to feel real, full, untainted sexual pleasure for a long, long time,” she said. “And it might be even longer before it would be appropriate or affordable for us to enjoy a pleasure session together. But if you were trying to choose the closest experience you could get to having me make love to you, to tide you over until the day when that might be possible, I can’t think of any option on the menu that would be closer than this one, can you?”

Leila kept squirming, and that innocent smile spilled over into full view. “No,” she answered.

Kristen tapped the button, sending a punishing jolt through Leila’s most sensitive bit of flesh, and watched her scream, arch her narrow back, and struggle against her cuffs.

“It’s still pretty fucking far from the real thing, though, isn’t it?” Kristen observed.

#

Leila’s nerves lit up like an old car dashboard turning on, full of erroneous and contradictory alerts all going off at once.

Her clit was cold and on fire, still and vibrating, hard and wet and right on the edge of an orgasmic buildup that had never happened, and also tired and spent and coming down, all at the same time.

She surrendered to the shocks as Kristen delivered them, resting against the table when she could, riding the involuntary movements of her own body as they happened. Taking punishment from her former trainee was easier now, having gotten past that first hurdle of bending over, and asking for what she deserved.

And she did deserve quite a lot. On that, she and the Bureau could agree, whether or not they agreed on the reasons.

With her dignity out of the way, she could remember what it had felt like to be an eager-to-please new trainee, and imagine herself being one again.

In the midst of everything, Leila felt the urge to celebrate. She was getting her life back. The Bureau had gotten a kick in the ass that it did have coming, and she was going to get to help it rebuild.

But most of all… she had finally spat out what she needed to say to Kristen, and Kristen was here for it.

Kristen was going to be here for everything.

Every time she pushed that button to punish Leila’s pussy, she was looking down into her eyes, both concerned and excited, biting her lip secretively, and Leila was sure she was picturing something else she’d rather be doing to it.

Maybe they were picturing some of the exact same things, at the exact same moments.

“How are you feeling?” Kristen asked.

“It hurts,” Leila answered honestly.

“Three more to go,” said Kristen.

Leila nodded. She had completely lost track of how many shocks she had taken, and how many more she owed today.

“Thank you for your mercy,” she muttered without irony.

“I wish I could give you more,” Kristen whispered.

“Someday,” said Leila. “I’m looking forward to it.”

“So am I,” said Kristen, pressing the button.

Leila breathed her way through the jangling sensation, fighting to keep her ability to listen.

“That’s why I’m going to keep you on the shortest leash the Bureau’s ever seen,” Kristen whispered, and pressed the button again. “You are going to be the perfect debtor, and then the perfect trainee, and then the perfect officer again, if it kills me. And then, I am going to ask you on a date.”

She pressed the button for one final, slightly longer burst.

Leila moaned, trying to rearrange the scrambled sensations into the shape of an orgasm in her mind, and pretend that was what it was.

Then it was over, more abruptly than any real orgasm, taking the illusion with it.

With a gentle but clinically efficient touch, Kristen removed the clamps. She tapped a command on her tablet, and Leila’s chains retightened, locking the front panel of her chastity device back into place.

“When you do,” Leila panted, “I’m going to say yes.”

***

Thanks for reading! If you had a good time, show me some love with your follows, favorites, and/or comments, and let me know if you want more Bureau of Pleasure Control!