She feared the box. She was aroused by the box.
The first time he brought it with him, he didn't mention it once. He carried it under his arm, almost hidden by the dark winter coat laid over his forearm. As he was setting his things down, he placed the box carefully onto the low table in the living room.
Thereafter, he didn't mention it. He didn't even look at it.
It drew from her the occasional curious glance. It was crafted from polished mahogany, with an elaborate curling brass design set into its curved lid. It was a few inches deep, rectangular, dense and sturdy looking. It reminded her of a 19th century jewellery box or perhaps a cutlery service.
But she soon forgot it as he began to distract her with his lips and fingers.
He had for some time tricked and teased her with the promise of release. Sometimes he assured her that she would come, after such a long time in denial, only to rescind on his promise and leave her either gasping on the edge or, occasionally, teasing her towards an exquisite ruin, so carefully crafted she sometimes could barely distinguish it from the edge towards which he lead her. On other occasions, he would talk her away from the edge, demanding she be careful, demanding she be a good girl, to ensure she was still chaste, that this was how he liked her, wracked with desire, every nerve around her body as sensitive as the one tiny place he would not touch, only to suddenly force her over, either with his playful fingers or by whispering in her ear, demanding she shake and shudder with pleasure, that she dissolve into a haze of shivering release, again and again, beyond her ability to endure, until she would beg for him to stop the waves of torturous pleasure.
Sometimes, he would.
She knew he was doing this deliberately, to make every moment of potential orgasm fraught with uncertainty, to keep the danger of denial or pleasure alive, to keep it electric and exciting. Further, she knew he knew all about operant conditioning. She knew he knew that inconsistent reinforcement was actually more effective than reliable reinforcement. And she knew he knew she knew this. And even knowing it made her wet with desire.
But tonight he was soft and sweet and tender with her, stroking and licking her into a mindless, melting liquid, into which he dripped gentle words and praise like poetry, somehow eliciting from her shuddering orgasm after orgasm, until she became floating motes of sensation in some timeless deep space trance, pooled on the bed like spilled quicksilver, unable to move, able only to follow the sensation of his fingers as they stroked at her hair, traversed her skin, squeezed her shoulders, kneaded her muscles.
She drifted into a dreamless slumber, wrapped in his arms, her buttocks pressed into his groin, his hardness nestled enticingly between her legs.
* * *
The box sat, closed, on the mantlepiece above the fireplace for a week. He never mentioned it.
And that week he forbade her from touching herself. He declined to touch her, too, although he was loving and tender towards her. The only physical contact he made was when, occasionally, he would catch her looking at the box and he would smile, and stroke her throat, and ask her to recall what it was that killed the cat.
"Curiosity," she would reply.
Or he would come up behind her unnoticed, as she stared at it, and surprise her by slipping an arm around chest, and pinch a nipple until it stung, put his lips close to her ear and whisper: "'Curiouser and curiouser', cried Alice..." quoting from the book she was reading at the time.
* * *
And then, one night, she noticed the box was gone from the mantlepiece.
Again, he made no mention of it. They sat in the living room, a fire crackling in the grate as the winter snow fell outside in the evening darkness, each of them absorbed in a book. But she was distracted. Her attention kept wandering to the mantlepiece and the missing box. She found herself crossing and uncrossing her legs, rereading the same paragraph over and over. At some point, she looked up to discover him watching her. He was smiling.
He put his book down.
"Follow me," he said, in that certain tone of voice she loved, and she did, trailing him into the bedroom and stopping before the freshly made bed upon which she saw he had laid the box, where its weight made it sink into the duvet. It sat there in the middle, a black obelisk in a sea of cream.
And this time he regarded it for some time, before turning to her to confirm she, too, was looking at it. Indeed she was. A dozen burgeoning questions dwelt upon her lips. He brushed them aside when he drew his thumb across her mouth, dissolved them with a soft and tender kiss. Then he curled his fingers around her throat, eliciting from her a moan, and dragged her over to a chair, into which he pressed her, growling into her ear: "Be still." And then he stripped and bound her.
She found herself naked, her arms affixed behind the seat of the chair, her ankles tight against its front legs, her own legs parted, her thighs wrapped in loops of soft rope and drawn apart, opening her. He even took the time to ease a cushion behind her back, arching it forward and forcing her to present her breasts.
He remained dressed in his suit. Not even his tie was out of place.
He walked around her, admiring her, praising her.
Then he reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew something. It dangled and swung in the dim light of the bedroom. A thin silver chain, its links tiny. It was a simple, fine necklace.
He moved behind her, brushed the back of her neck with his fingertips, sending shivers across her skin, and then gently but firmly slid his fingers into her hair. Sometimes he would grasp her hair suddenly and unexpectedly. Other times, as now, he would do it slowly, in order to fill her with anticipation. Ever then, the tug might be quick, or perhaps exquisitely slow. She would never be sure which was coming.
This time it was slow and deliberate and as the pressure built she moaned. He angled her head up to make her look at what he was holding in his other hand.
It was the chain he had drawn from his jacket pocket. And now, dangling in front of her eyes, she noticed something hanging from it.
It was a small brass key, just about the right size for the keyhole on the front of the box.
It spun and glittered in the dim light of the room as his fingers entwined themselves deeper into her hair, fixing her head in place.
"This box," he nodded at it, "and everything within it is a gift."
He released her hair and moved around her to make his way to the box. He inserted the key and turned it, just once. Something in the mechanism detached with a heavy, spring-loaded click and the top of the box popped up a few millimetres.
Something about this thrilled her heart and fluttered in her belly. The nipples he had pinched throughout the week throbbed. Despite her thighs being parted and fixed in place by her bonds, despite the cushion at her back arching her chest forward, making her feel as open and exposed as should could think to be, she felt her hips melt wider, she felt a shiver across her belly, she felt her labia begin to slick and slide against themselves.
