Tom arrived for day two of Elena's psychology PhD project. The aim of the project was to understand how people react to captivity. To understand how people's emotional state reacts when put into situations where they have absolutely no control.
The heavy coffin shaped cage sat in the middle of the basement with its lid open, ready and waiting for its test subject. Elena swung around on her stool, pulled off her glasses and stared at Tom.
"What happened yesterday?" she asked with a characteristic flick of her head and bounce of her blonde ponytail.
"Oh yeah," Tom replied, "... your sister."
With Elena at the University to meet with her supervisor, she had asked her sister, Kate, to keep an eye on her caged subject. A simple enough task, to check he was okay and let him out once the testing was complete. However, Kate had taken the opportunity to tease the good-looking man in her care, teasing him and had ending up stripping naked in front of him. All the while, Tom's brain activity, heart rate, temperature, movement and breathing had been monitored.
"Kate's a bit of a flirt," Tom replied coyly.
"Fuck," the studious older sister was furious, "what can I do with these results?"
Elena spun around again to stare at her laptop, her old blue jeans sinking into the creaky leather of the old bar stool, "This is really weird," she mumbled as she sucked on her pencil.
"I'm sorry," Tom replied tentatively, we'll be fine if Kate's not here."
"What did she do to you?" The jeans spun back around with an accusative look in Elena's big brown eyes.
"Bit of a tease... isn't she."
The jeans spun back to the laptop, "According to this, you were both aroused and terrified!"
"Yep."
Elena stared at the screen, her features softening, "This is so interesting..."
Tom was getting impatient, "Want me to come back?" he asked.
"No way! You're going straight back in!"
Tom sighed. Elena's help had saved his own University project and so despite the awkwardness, Tom climbed in and lay down inside the coffin shaped cage.
The university had inherited the cage and given it to their top student for what would hopefully be ground-breaking research. The ex-military experiment had been designed to be completely escape proof. The steel was specially hardened and would give off dangerous sparks if cut, that would supposedly kill the occupant. The lock had been taken from a high security safe. The keyhole set back between two of the heavy bars and in close proximity to the occupant's head. Drilling it out had been designed to harm whoever was inside.
Tom lay down carefully, positioning his neck, wrists, waist and ankles in the specially designed holes in the internal cross pieces. Once the lid was closed, the cage would hold everything rigidly in place.
Still Elena hadn't looked up, the sleeves of her baggy cream jumper now pulled up to the elbows.
"I can do this later?" Tom checked again.
"We are doing this now," Elena replied obstinately, connecting the various monitors to his body, "Right! Now I will know everything about you."
"Let's hope not," Tom smiled.
Elena placed her glasses on the desk and used both hands to haul the hugely heavy lid down on to Tom's body. The hydraulic supports controlled the speed until the lid thudded shut with a loud array of clicks and clunks as all the locked engaged and automatically deadlocked. It would now take the key and a twelve-digit code to reopen.
"Think it closed?" Tom joked.
Elena rolled her eyes, "Where's the bloody key," she murmured, rummaging through papers and discarded clothes strewn across her desk.
"Ellie?" Tom called anxiously.
"Don't worry, I've found it," she replied, placing the complicated key on her stool, "It will be safe there," she turned and sat down, wriggling a little until the key came to rest between her cheeks.
Elena looked at her readouts and then down at the helpless man, "What was that spike?"
"What spike?"
"When I sat on the key you reacted," Elena replied thoughtfully, "Would that happen if I took off my jeans... and sat on you?" Her blushing face was quickly distracted by another spike in the readouts.
"What is wrong with you, Tommy?" she cried, standing up and sitting down on the cage, only the thickness of the bars from Tom's face.
"I can't help it, El. Maybe you need a female assistant instead." Tom whole body was straining yet going nowhere.
Elena was now smiling, her glasses discarded, as she jumped up and walked around the cage. Her project was already giving amazing insights into the mind of her secret crush.
"I think the idea of this cage, and my project, is that I decide when you get out."
"Maybe I'm too close to you," Tom breathed, well aware that Elena had seen the bulge from his erection.
"Maybe you don't have a choice."
Tom tore his eyes away from Elena's denim clad figure and look across at the key.
"We won't need this for a while," Ellie replied, taking the only key and pushing it deep into the back pocket of her jeans.
"The key?" Tom swallowed; his throat dry.
"...is in my pocket." Elena perched teasingly on the edge of the cage.
Tom could smell her perfume and sense a new smouldering look in the eyes of the geeky girl.
"Now, if you're going to skew my results, maybe we can explore something else..." she breathed and with Tom totally unable to stop her, she reached through the bars and unbuttoned his jeans, "...maybe I have another variable to measure?"
"Ellie, please!"
"Please what? Please can I take my clothes off like my sister did?"
Tom had never seen his friend like this. He had long since wanted to ask Elena out and here she was blatantly flirting with him. He instinctively tried to move and cried out with frustration when he couldn't. She had already removed her jumper to reveal a fitted white tee-shirt that moulded around her breasts and the impossibly cute butt was still perched above his head.
*
Elena was so far from her comfort zone, but sibling jealously and frustration drove her on. She had been obsessed with Tom for as long as she remember, and yet within one afternoon, Kate had done things to him that she never had.
She stood up, spun on her black ballet flats and tried to treat him to her best provocative walk. She felt awkward even before she caught one shoe on the stool. Fuck, she needed to tease him more.
"I'm going to change the unlock code," Elena announced, "to one my sister doesn't know."
She tore a scrap of paper from her thick pad and wrote down twelve random numbers and then crouched by the cage's small keypad to change the code. She hurried out to the toilet and unbuttoned and tugged down her tight jeans. Using the mirror to help her, Elena then took a red marker pen and wrote the code in small swirling numbers across the bottom of her left butt cheeks. She buttoned herself back into her tight jeans and hurried back.
"Say some numbers," she called to Tom.
"Okay... six, four, eight, two...."
"And some more!"
Tom continued as Elena lit the match, holding it carefully between two sensibly cut nails, and touched it against the scrap of paper with the code.
