The Bureau of Pleasure Control Ch. 03

This still wasn't quite a question.

Professor Lawrence reached into the crate and retrieved the riding crop.

"We could invite Zach to hold this and deliver just one swift swat to your clit."

Kristen's starving clit throbbed with a rush of blood.

"It's not like you're using it lately anyway." Professor Lawrence went on.

It throbbed harder.

"You'd have plenty of time to heal from any bruising before your next chance at pleasure. Just one swat to your little tender spot, one chance for Zach to channel any lingering ire he might hold for you, and the two of you can have a long, unsupervised cram session together. That sounds more than fair, doesn't it?"

"Yes," Kristen blurted out, not caring how she was supposed to calculate her response.

The fear of that swat buzzed through her body like a live current, but the thought of getting this over with in one second, and then shifting into a role where her excellence was acknowledged, while simultaneously clearing the air with one of her new barracks-mates before any drama could start....

Compared with a caning of unthinkable length, that felt like mercy.

"Face front, then," Professor Lawrence directed, passing off the crop to the still awkward but not entirely disinterested Zach. "Legs open."

Kristen turned her chair toward the class and obeyed, unable to hide the shaking in her legs.

Professor Lawrence retrieved his ID card from his jacket pocket and tapped it to the front of Kristen's chastity device. With a few taps of the control app on his phone, the chains of the device loosened enough for him to pull the front panel down and away from her pubis like an oven door.

"Just one," Professor Lawrence prompted Zach. "Make it hurt."

Zach took his place in front of Kristen, just far enough off to the side to avoid blocking her from the class's view.

Apology was just one of the many sentiments that flashed through Zach's eyes as he raised the crop.

Kristen gripped the sides of the chair, reminding herself to breathe, and ignoring her own reminders. The hair stood up all over her body in anticipation. Her right foot kept tapping spasmodically, completely of its own accord.

Zach took a breath.

"Stop," Professor Lawrence said.

Kristen moaned in confusion.

Zach froze, looking to him questioningly.

The professor stepped past Zach to tap his ID against Kristen's device once more.

Kristen let out a shuddering exhale when the chains tightened back into place, locking her away again.

"What?" Professor Lawrence asked her. "You didn't want me to make him hit you there, did you?"

"N... no," Kristen answered.

"Then get back to your desks, both of you. None of that counted, by the way. Although, I can set you up with a tutoring space if you'd both like."

As Kristen returned to her seat, she wondered if she had just gotten away with lying.

No. She really did want to protect her tremblingly sensitive clit, so her answer was at least more true than not.

Still, it was dizzying to realize just how desperate she had gotten for any kind of clitoral attention at all. Enough that there was a tiny part of her that had thought the punishment sounded better than nothing.

"So." Professor Lawrence clapped his hands together, half-sitting against the edge of his desk. "What did we just learn about the motivation zone?"

Still, no one ventured a guess, but the whole class waited for the explanation with rapt attention.

"What was the officer's objective in the scenario we just played out?" Professor Lawrence asked.

There was a silence, long enough that Kristen thought no one was going to answer again, before a hand rose into the air in the front row.

"Yes, Cara," Professor Lawrence pointed to her.

"To get Kristen to accept punishment for her actions."

"Correct," said Professor Lawrence. "And how did I accomplish that objective? Jason?"

Jason lowered his tentatively raised hand.

"You... you bribed her?"

Professor Lawrence laughed indulgently. "I suppose you could call it that. But what I offered her really wasn't much, if you think about it, was it? I didn't lavish her with unearned points, or unauthorized stimulation. The biggest prize I dangled was chance to provide uncompensated assistance to the Bureau's recruitment and training efforts. The important thing is that I laid out a conceivable path back to compliance for her, and helped her to see that it was in her best interests to follow it."

He began sorting the tools from the crate into those that could still be reused as-is and those in need of cleaning, as though he would have no further use for them today.

"People are most motivated to comply," he explained, "when they believe that doing so will significantly improve their experience in life, especially in the short term. They get unmanageable when they're feeling complacent, taking their pleasure for granted, but also when they're feeling helpless, unable to improve their circumstances no matter what they try."

He motioned toward Kristen and Zach, directing the rest of the class's attention as they absorbed this idea.

"The space between those feelings, that's the motivation zone. So many people believe that helplessness and compliance are the same thing. That misconception is exactly why so many attempts at control fall apart. Helplessness is one of compliance's deadliest enemies. During the quiz, what was I trying to get Zach to do? Yes, Amber?"

"Describe the hook," Amber answered from the back row.

"Exactly," said Professor Lawrence. "And did I have the power to make him do that, while he was feeling helpless?"

"No."

"No!" Professor Lawrence repeated triumphantly. "I could have kept hooking him all day long, stepped it up to a thousand other types of punishment, ordered extensions to his mandatory lockup, made his life miserable for longer than his crisis-mode thinking could even comprehend in that moment. He had almost no power in the interaction, yet I couldn't make him do what I was asking."

The room was heavy with silence.

"Knowing your arsenal is essential," said Professor Lawrence. "But you can't let yourself fall in love with it. If you do, you'll be tempted to reach straight for the nastiest piece of equipment at the first sign of resistance. You'll find yourself beating your subjects deeper into the hole under the motivation zone, when what you need to do is toss them a rope, and help them climb up into it."

He glanced at the clock.

"I think we'll leave it here for today. Dismissed. Except for you, of course."

Kristen took the cue to stay in her seat, as her classmates packed up and filed out around her. She stuffed her notebook and the two practice straps into her bag and waited with crossed arms, more out of a feeling of smallness than stubbornness now.

Professor Lawrence remained in his half-seated position at the edge of the desk, watching her wordlessly until at least thirty seconds after everyone else had gone.

Finally, he said, "Good work today."

Kristen's chest reflexively glowed.

"But you did cheat," he cut through the feeling. "And those practice responses were just practice. Over the desk, now."

He slapped the wooden surface as he stood up from it.

Resigned, Kristen walked to the front of the room and lowered her torso lengthwise over the desk, nervously eyeing the bamboo cane still waiting among the reusable tools.

Instead, professor Lawrence picked up the hook from the to-clean pile, and began scrubbing it down with disinfectant wipes.

"This seems only appropriate, don't you think?" he asked.

"Yes, professor," Kristen agreed.

It wouldn't be comfortable, but she knew she would have accepted this to give Zach a break in the first place, if that option had been on the table.

Professor Lawrence applied a fresh layer of lubricant to the hook's newly clean end, took hold of the zipper tag at the back of Kristen's neck, and pulled it all the way down, so that her tunic dress fell open along her naked back.

Kristen paced her breathing and did her best to relax her body as Professor Lawrence lined up the hard metal bead of the hook with her ass.

"Are you going to try to sneak something past me again now?" he asked calmly. "Or are you going to trust me?"

"Trust," Kristen answered in a small voice.

The reminder that she had disappointed someone, whether she actually regretted her actions or not, was one of the deepest-stinging types of punishment for her.

He pushed the bead in, followed by the full seven-inch length of the curved end.

Kristen's clit rioted, demanding a scrap of the friction her ass could easily spare, to no avail.

Professor Lawrence pressed the length of the hook handle against her spine, right up to the base of her skull, and fastened the chain at the end around her neck. A second chain, coiled inside the midpoint of the handle, he unreeled and wrapped around her waist. Her breath cut off briefly when he lifted her by the neck chain, in order to pass the waist chain under her.

With a tap of his ID card, both chains automatically shortened themselves to a safe but secure tightness, where they would remain until he removed them, holding the hooked end of the instrument inside her.

He zipped her dress back up over the hook handle and gave her ass the usual parting smack, making her clench against the intruding object.

"Go on," he said. "Don't keep your mentor waiting any longer. I don't want her coming after me."

Gingerly, Kristen managed to lift her rigid upper body off of the desk and make her laborious way out the door.

#

Officer Deacon was waiting for Kristen alone in one of the officers' lounges, sipping coffee with the air of someone who had never found the challenge she couldn't meet with dignity.

Wrung out from the morning, Kristen stumbled right to her mentor's chair and threw herself into her arms. She had to bend deeply at the hips to lower her head onto Officer Deacon's soft shoulder.

It was the first time they had hugged, and Kristen would not have been surprised if Officer Deacon had pushed her away and levied a point deduction for her presumption.

After a brief, stiff pause, the officer set down her coffee and embraced Kristen in return, squeezing her closer to her high, thinly covered breasts.

"Tough day?" Officer Deacon asked, tracing the hook handle up Kristen's back to the chain at her neck.

"Yeah, it wasn't my best," Kristen said casually.

Officer Deacon eased Kristen just far enough away to look her in the eye, brushing her long, dark hair behind her ears. "The professors love to set you up for the toughest attention, don't they?"

"It sure seems that way," Kristen admitted.

"It was the same for me."

Kristen scoffed with disbelief.

"Really," said Officer Deacon. "It's because they see your potential."

"I must put off prodigy vibes, then."

Officer Deacon allowed Kristen a few more seconds of self-pity, before giving her nipple a rough pinch through its stiff, pleasure-proof pastie.

"Come on," she said, pulling Kristen upright by her hook handle while rising to join her. "We have a pleasant case to take your mind off it this afternoon."

"Disciplining a bigger screwup than me?" Kristen guessed.

The officer shook her head.

"Put on your cupid wings," Officer Deacon said, wiggling her shoulders with a puckish grin, "because we're conducting a honeymoon."

***

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