Etiology of Desire (ch. 02)

With the curse's reactivation looming, Minh needed help. At noon Sunday, her clothes and anything she tried to cover herself with would vanish. An animal thirst would afflict her and she would find no orgasm for release. Only Dakota's compliance in lifting the curse repeater, or (a short term solution lasting until noon the following Sunday) his allowing her to take him in her mouth and swallow, would free her. She knew all of this in great detail because it was her own curse he'd set the repeater on.

Once again, not knowing who else to ask, Minh sought out Henry. She knocked on his door Thursday evening.

At first he swung the door wide open, but when he recognized it was Minh, he swung it back in, leaving just enough room for his face. He was hiding her from whoever was inside.

"She's with you I guess," Minh said.

On the couch, in a tank top and still-wet hair from a shower, was the girl Henry left Minh for: Eva. Henry would tell the story differently, but this was the truth. He preferred her.

"What brings you?" he said.

"You eat breakfast with Dakota."

"I do."

Minh handed him a vial she'd concealed in the long sleeve of her robe. "Season his food with this."

He quickly stuffed it in his pocket, then leaned in to whisper. "This is too much for you to ask."

Minh peeked over his shoulder at Eva, who was reclined watching television with her hands clasped behind her head, a posture that exaggerated the size of her chest. "You feel guilty about her, don't you? Do this and you're forgiven."

Minh's plan was incomplete, because she had only a few days. The potion in the vial was a recipe from the red scroll, which Minh translated properly this time, by hand. It was a suggestibility potion. Its drinker (Dakota), when commanded by its preparer (Minh), would be helpless against an urge to comply.

Dakota's invitation arrived by owl Saturday evening. He invited her to meet at 11:30 AM at a cabin he'd booked in the small town down the road from the castle.

It was a spacious cabin with large glass windows overlooking the snowy streets below. "Shoes here," he said when he let her in.

Thanks to Henry dosing Dakota with the potion, Minh had a counter move to make, though she needed to spend it carefully. Once activated, the suggestibility effect only lasted ten minutes. She took a deep breath and eyed the clock. They sat down at the table at 11:38.

"I've got a couple friends joining us soon," Dakota said. "It'll be a group study session."

Others? Minh clenched. Her humiliation might have an audience. She set down her glass. "Do you possess a heart?"

He smiled softly at her. "The topic of the lesson is: pleasuring a woman. The friends I invited are freshman from the soccer team. Don't worry, you'll like them. I chose the most handsome two."

With stakes this high, she couldn't afford to delay any longer. She issued her first command. "Dakota, set me free of the curse."

He tsk'd his tongue and shook his head. "You bungled it again, Minh. On two counts. First, Henry felt guilty and confessed right before I took my first bite. Second, you forgot to lock the curse orientation. so I just flipped it and ate my potatoes."

Her face blushed red. Before she could respond, a knock came on the door.

By 11:45 Dakota had arranged the room for a seminar. The two freshman sat side by side in dining chairs they'd pulled away from the table. Dakota stood in front of them, leaning against the table, ready to lecture.

He patted the spot on the table next to him, and issued his first command to Minh. "Strip to your underwear, throw your clothes in the fireplace, and sit up here."

Minh wanted to resist Dakota's instructions, but the sensation of resistance was like that of trying to be still with restless legs. Not painful, just impossible to bear. It build on itself, narrowing Minh's thoughts until she could think only one thing: if she obeyed Dakota, the sensation would go away.

Once she'd pulled her dress overhead and removed her socks, the cold draft from the open window made bumps form on her skin, hardened her nipples. Her clothes caught flame. There was nothing else in the cabin to cover herself with. In fact, it was barely furnished at all. Aside from the wooden table and chairs, there was nothing. Not even curtains on the window, or a couch with pillows to hold in front of her. Passersby on the streets below would only have to feel curious and tilt their heads up and they would apprehend the entire scene.

11:47. "Spread your legs wide," Dakota said. "Sit up straight. Rest your arms at your sides."

He had one of the freshmen fetch scissors from the kitchen and used them to cut off Minh's bra, which he then tossed in the fire. 11:50. "Both of you come here and pay attention. We start slow. Don't go right for the most sensitive areas. Run your fingers softly over her chest, but avoid the nipples. Massage her inner thighs, but don't go all the way up."

The curse hadn't reactivated yet, but Minh was beginning to feel aroused anyway. She had never received the attention of three men before, and the command to keep her arms at her sides was not the same as having her arms restrained. As impossible as resisting the command was, there was still an element of choice. She was choosing to allow these freshman to run their hands over her chest and between her legs as the more favorable of a choice between two discomforts.

Instead of resisting, she tried to plead for freedom. "Dakota, please let me--"

"Stop. You can moan, but don't speak."

For the last three minutes of the effect period of the suggestibility potion, Minh endured the wandering groping of four thirsty hands about her body without making a sound. As soon as the potion faded, she hopped down from the table and stepped back from the three men. "I don't know what he told you," she said to the freshman, "but I'm under a curse, and another one activates in five minutes. Please help me."

"Actually," the taller of the two said, "he told us the story. Wasn't it you who laid the curse, and you did it backward by mistake?"

"Well, but it was meant to be just one time, not--"

"And," the shorter one said, "didn't you try to curse him through his food after that?"

Minh fell to her knees and clasped her hands as if in prayer. "Yes, that's all true. I started this. But can you find mercy?"

Dakota knelt in front of her and lifted her head with a gentle finger under her chin. He looked into her eyes, then he turned to the freshmen and said, "what do you say boys? Should we give her another chance?"

They seemed disappointed by his asking the question. They were hoping for an active day. But both of them nodded.

11:59. Dakota waved his wand and pulled a pattern of light out of Minh's heart and into the air, the same pattern she saw when the curses professor projected the curse onto a canvas to study it. "Here it is, out of you."

Minh stood, but was still suspicious. When noon struck, her underwear, the only article she had left, did not disappear. Slowly the curse hanging in the air dispersed and faded. This was the time to whistle for her owl, ask a friend to bring her extra robes, and walk back to the castle. But the thought of writing such a letter, or leaning out the window to whistle for her owl, made her tense with anger. It was beneath her to suffer such indignities.

It was impulsive, her next move. Ill considered. An obvious trap. She reached for her wand and incanted the curse against Dakota again, the same as the original but this time getting her 'anh' and her 'em' right. Flawless delivery.

But anticipated delivery. Nothing happened, and the boys behind Dakota started laughing.

Dakota shook his head. "Did you think that would surprise me? Obviously I prepared for that. The same curse twice, my god. The sloppiness."

A warm feeling began in her fingers and toes and spread throughout her body.

He continued. "Your curse release was conditional on you _not_ cursing me again. Stand up, spread your legs wide and keep your arms at your side."

The compulsion to obey told her this curse was not just the same as before. It was not only the nakedness, not just the thirst and ever-increasing arousal, not just the total dependence on swallowing his come for release. It was also the suggestibility effect. He could issue commands, too. Meaning his technique had been simple: a general reflector. Every curse she ever laid on him would accumulate in the it, and apply to her when triggered.

There was nothing to do but stand and spread her legs as she was told. Her underwear had vanished, and the curse's enormous thirst, now alive in her, had made her obviously wet. She held on to her anger as well as she could, but fantasies of Dakota touching her between her legs competed for her awareness. He approached her, tucked her hair behind her ears, kissed her forehead, placed a hand on her abdomen. He whispered in her ear, "I can touch you anywhere, and you'll love it."

For the first hour, Dakota sat in one of the dining chairs smoking joints and directing the freshman to finger Minh in this way or that. Then he taught them how to lick her, which they took turns doing with her lying on the table. Eventually she had to be bound to the table legs by her feet and wrists because the monotonically increasing pleasure threatened to overwhelm even the inhibition sensations that kept her obeying the command to be still. Even with her best effort she couldn't comply, and wanted to squirm away from their tongues, which by the end had become quite articulate with her clit. And because the two freshman took turns working on her, they never lost their vigor and Minh never found a moment of respite.

When Minh started going numb from hyperventilation, Dakota told them to step away and approached her at the table, cupped her face lovingly in his hands and kissed her forehead again. "Lesson's over," he said to the boys. And then it was just the two of them, Dakota and Minh. Minh's breathing slowly calmed.

Dakota untied her restraints, returned to his chair, snapped his fingers. He pointed at the ground in front of him.

Minh understood his command. She knelt naked in front of him and awaited instruction.

Dakota unbuttoned and unzipped his pants, revealed his erection to her. She flinched toward it like a dog anxious for a treat. Whatever sense of personhood might have existed in her in the morning had been erased by desire. But he wanted her to remember who she was so that she could not escape shame. He said, "If you want to take me in your mouth, you have to answer this question honestly."

"Anything," she said.

"Of who are you most envious? Who makes you doubt yourself?"

The answer came to mind immediately, and made Minh remember herself. It was Eva. Dakota was almost the answer, but she could never envy a man as much as another woman. "I don't want to---"

"Tell me."

"Eva."

"Henry's girlfriend? Tell me why."

Against all her will to withhold information, her feelings spilled out. "Her body. When I look at her I hate her because I understand why Henry prefers her. Not just her body but that's she's relaxed, that she doesn't need to control him. And in form fitting tank tops she makes my groin tingle and burn which I hate, because it feels good, and I don't want her to have that effect on me."

Dakota nodded. "Good girl. You can take me in your mouth now, but you have to touch yourself while you do it. Earnestly."

He fit in her mouth, just barely. She held the base of his cock with her left hand and massaged her clit with her right. It was unfair. Her own pleasure, already far surpassing his, progressed faster than his too. She couldn't properly moan with him filling her mouth. Moaning louder and more desperately was the only way to release some of the building pressure. She licked up and down under his head to make him finish faster.

It took thirty minutes. As soon as his hot come filled her mouth she fell back onto the ground in a whole-body spasm. For over a minute, she had no voluntary control of herself. All of the orgasms blocked by the curse hit her at once. During these spasms she squirted continuously.

Dakota lit another joint, reclined, and watched until the spasms became mere twitches a few seconds apart. "That good, huh?"

Eventually the twitches were small, and she could sit up. Clarity started to return to her. "Where are my clothes?"

"Oh, they don't come back by themselves. That was just a favor I did you last time. Do you know a spell to summon clothes?"

She turned away. She didn't.

"Well then, I suggest you whistle for your owl."

He put on his coat and shoes and left, leaving her to ponder the depths to which her situation had fallen. Her recurring curse to nakedness and sexual frustration had been complicated by a suggestibility effect, and she had just handed Dakota extremely dangerous information about her feelings with respect to Eva, which he would surely use to torture her next Sunday. Plus, because the curse had evolved since the curses professor took a snapshot and started working on a release, she would have to visit him again to make sure his work was not in vain, and she didn't know if she could bear to face his questions were she to do that.

When she leaned out the window to whistle for her owl, the freshmen from earlier were down on the street, with friends, and they pointed and whistled at her.