“What kind of kinks do you enjoy, Keunhee?” Riley asked. There was a moment’s hesitation, and the answer was a little dreamy.

“I like tight clothing that feels smooth and reveals things it shouldn’t,” she said, “and I like to be spanked.”

Riley felt immediately disappointed; having spent so much time enjoying his videos he’d got a wider sense of what kinks could actually be, and the limited idea Ms Paek had wasn’t what he’d call kinky at all.

On the other hand, it might be something he could build on, in time.

He reached out slowly and ran his hand very lightly over the swell of her ass. It was the fact she’d talked about being spanked, he told himself, but he would have admitted, if he’d had anyone to press him on it, that it was only a matter of time, he knew, before he’d touched her while she was in trance.

“Keunhee,” he said, “are you wearing sexy underwear?”

“No.”

“Why not? You said you have some. Don’t you want to make an impression on me?” Riley knew he must sound a little petulant, but he couldn’t honestly say he cared all that much.

“Not that kind of impression.”

He bit his lip to stop him from just retorting Yes, you do. It might have been the right call, but it didn’t feel like it; would have just felt petulant.

He didn’t need to be childish here, he reminded himself. She was deeply entranced and truly believed that meant her defences were fully down; he could get anything he wanted.

But he’d do that best by taking his time, being smart, and making sure he had the right approach. It that meant he needed a little more self-control…

Riley snorted with amusement. If it meant he needed more self-control, he thought, he certainly had the motivation.

“Do you always wear boring underwear for lessons?”

“Yes.”

“So when you wake up, if you give it any thought at all you will assume you’re wearing boring underwear.”

“Yes.”

“Keunhee, in a moment I’m going to,” what did he want to do? Yes, “pinch your butt. It won’t wake you from trance, because the metronome is still ticking. Understand?”

“Yes. When this metronome is on, I sink deep.”

“That’s right. But when I pinch your butt, you’ll look away from the metronome without waking. You’ll,” oh, blessed inspiration, “carry its tick with you in your mind, in the rhythm of your body. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“You’ll go upstairs, to your room, and you’ll undress, and you’ll put on some of your favourite sexy underwear for impressing people, and then you’ll put the rest of what you’re wearing now back on. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

Riley nodded in satisfaction, then clucked his tongue in annoyance. “Oh, and you will come back down to this room and stand just like you are now once you’re done. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“Good girl.”

He let the soft, gentle whimper of pleasure echo for a few moments before he pinched her butt and she left the room, her body moving perfectly to the same beat as the metronome.

Riley stood there for a little while, wondering if he could get away with following her. He wasn’t sure enough that she wouldn’t stir from trance - he needed, he thought, to find something else that would also trance her, an alternative option to the metronome for times when he might need it - and this would be too, too painfully close to success for him to be willing to screw it up.

He occupied himself opening up his violin case and preparing the instrument while he waited, and in due course she descended the stairs again, drifted into the doorway of the room, and stood with her hands on her hips, arms akimbo, once again. He had to mentally review what he’d said to her before he acknowledged that it was a technically correct response to his instructions.

Of course, in and of itself, that was a good reminder.

“You like it when I get here early, Keunhee,” he said. “Remember?”

“I remember.”

“Now that I have, you want to make it easy for me to do that again. What do you want?”

“I want to make it easy for you to get here early again.”

“Very good,” he said. “Very precise. Keunhee, after I leave today you will make sure that the hour before my lesson and the hour after my lesson is always left empty, in case we need it. Do you understand?”

“I understand.”

“What will you do?”

“After you leave today I will make sure the hour before and the hour after your lesson are always left empty.”

“Why?”

“In case we need it.” Riley was quite happy that she’d accepted the ‘we’ in that statement. If any of this bled over from her subconscious to her conscious mind, Ms Paek was more likely to interpret it as something they were working on together if the word ‘we’ popped up in her head.

“Good girl,” he said, and he watched again as her blank glaze softened back into a dreamy, vacant gaping smile. It wasn’t fair, he thought, just how hot that looked; she would have no idea the effect her entranced self could have on someone like him, no matter how used she was to people being into her.

“Do you date often, Keunhee?” he asked.

“What does often mean?”

He hadn’t expected the question. He hadn’t expected her to be able to ask the question.

“How often do you go on dates?” he tried instead.

“I see a couple of people a year,” she answered, “maybe three or four times each.”

Which wasn’t the answer he’d - well, he hadn’t really expected any given answer, he’d just had a sudden surge of possessiveness. But all the same, he hadn’t expected that kind of detail, nor what it made him think about.

“Why don’t any of them last?” he asked, fascinated, then shook his head. “Don’t answer that,” he instructed, cutting across her starting to answer. This wasn’t what he was here for. This was the same mistake he’d made chasing after whether or not she was kinky.

“Keunhee,” he said, “do you remember how you found motivation for me last week?”

“Yes.”

“This week we’re going to change that rule a little. Instead of undoing one button each time, you’re going to remove your clothing, one item at a time. Do you understand?”

“I understand.”

There was more he wanted to add, but after everything he’d gone through - her initial disappointment to see him arrive early, trancing her, correcting that, pushing through her unconscious resistances to make her truthful, all the detours he kept letting himself go on, getting her wearing the right underwear, all to build up to an improved strip on last week - he found that once it was done he was suddenly tired, in that way you were when the adrenaline finally wore off.

So he stood back by the metronome and he stopped its ticking, and he watched the flutter of Ms Paek’s eyelids as she struggled to re-orient herself quickly enough. His first impulse was to apologise for being early, but he remembered in time that she wasn’t upset about that anymore.

*

Ms Paek took her hands off her hips a little uncertainly; it had been so good to see Riley come in early, so good to see him devoted to his music as he should be, but she’d reacted perhaps a little poorly - or at least, she decided, her light-hearted joke about it had fallen flat.

She forgot sometimes that Riley genuinely did seem to hero-worship her, and scolding him even in jest had probably been unfair.

And yet…

“Good Lord, Riley, how did you get your violin out of its case that fast?” she blurted as her brain caught back up with the situation. “You should treat your instrument with more care!”

The young man looked puzzled for a moment then flushed bright red. “Sorry, Ms Paek,” he said. “I guess… well, I guess I’m just eager to begin.”

“Well, I certainly can’t criticise you for that,” she said, chuckling slightly as she did. “I’m glad to see you’ve found your motivation.” So saying and without realising, she shrugged the sombre black jacket off her shoulders and let it fall to the floor where she stood, forgotten, before she made her way over to her usual teaching chair.

*

The metronome was ticking, and all - or rather, Paek Keunhee - was still, except for her eyes, which flicked back and forth with the same mechanical precision as the pendulum rod she watched. An alien observer might have wondered whether her eyes tracked the rod or whether the rod, instead, followed her movements; so closely synchronised had they become that it was hard to tell which followed which.

The sheer dark silk of her bra cups was made even darker by the golden satin straps and elaborate decoration framing them; the panties, in the same style, were high-waisted but broad. In theory, both items covered most of the wearer’s modesty, but the dark material in between left nothing to the imagination, especially on the crotch of the panties where a stain of desire was slowly growing.

Set beside the chair in which she sat were discarded shoes, blouse, pants, and socks, but the lingerie had remained no matter how motivated Riley sought to be.

With the lesson mostly at an end, he had set the metronome running almost immediately to better understand why.

“Keunhee,” Riley said, “you were a very good girl at the start of the lesson.”

She didn’t answer, not exactly. Her parted lips were now smiling lazily, but that was the only change.

He didn’t know why he’d expected any different. He found himself thinking that a lot; he was sure it would pass with time, though. He was learning, that was all.

“But you were less good by the end,” he said, and her eyes widened, still silent. The smile which had been vapid and dreamy was fragile suddenly.

“Why aren’t you naked, Keunhee?” he asked.

“I don’t understand,” she answered.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t understand why I would be naked.”

“Because you take clothes off when you hear or say ‘motivation’.”

“Yes I do.”

“So why aren’t you naked?”

“I don’t have any clothes on.”

He was gathering in his breath for a sharp retort when he stopped himself. “What are you wearing?” he asked instead.

“Lingerie.”

“Isn’t that clothes?”

“Lingerie goes under clothes.”

Once again, it wasn’t that she had been disobedient; it was some kind of clash of assumptions. He didn’t know if this was something where Koreans thought about this differently or if she’d just grown up with the distinction between clothes and underclothes mattering, but either one was fine, now that he knew.

“Okay,” he said softly. “Next week, Keunhee, you will consider your rule about motivation to apply to lingerie, too. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” The vulnerable cast to her smile seemed to be gone, as if the smile had imperceptibly brightened from his changing topics.

“You always wear lingerie for my lessons,” he said. “You’ll change with an hour to go, if you have to. Because my lessons are special occasions, and because you want to impress me.” He nodded. “What do you always do?”

“I always wear lingerie for your lessons.”

“Why?”

“Because your lessons are special occasions.”

“And?”

“Because I want to impress you.”

“Say that again.”

“Because I want to impress you.”

“Good girl, Keunhee,” Riley said as soothingly as he could. “You do want to impress me, isn’t that right?”

“Yes.”

“And so you will follow your rules. But you won’t let yourself know you’re following rules, will you?”

“No.”

“That’s right. You don’t need to know.” Inspiration struck; this time he managed to contain himself from blurting it out, and instead turned it over a few times in his head before saying anything. But, if anything, this looked like a good framework to introduce, so he said it. “Instruments don’t know the rules of the music they play, do they?”

“No.”

“Repeat.”

“Instruments don’t know the rules of the music they play.”

Riley stared at her for a few moments, at the glassiness of her eyes, at the parted, dreamy smile that shaped her lips, the single gleam that was the first bead of saliva collecting in the v of her lip. Something at the back of his mind insisted that that metaphor was going to work really well in changing her mind.

He smiled to himself. Little by little he felt like he was making real progress, sometimes even when he couldn’t see it for himself.

He moved closer to her again, stood looking down on her from just beside her line of sight to the pendulum rod, and took in properly just how her body looked in only her lingerie. “Instruments are happy to be played,” he said. “Repeat.”

“Instruments are happy to be played,” she responded. Was he reading the slight twitch in her lips correctly? Was that a little more of a smile than there had been before? Or was it wishful thinking?

It didn’t matter. “Stand up,” he said, and she stood, her arms hanging limply by her sides throughout, her knees and hips simply straightening - though her head drooped a little forward on her neck, just enough to keep her eyes locked to the pendulum rod. He moved her chair back, stepped close behind her, close enough that his chest almost touched her back.

The scent of her hair was amazing. He’d always thought, when people talked about that kind of thing, that it was made up somehow, but the scent of someone you were attracted to could be an intoxicant of its own; he finally had himself close enough to someone where there were no distractions, where he could just savour every part of someone in turn, and it meant he was finally making that discovery.

He put his hands on her arms by her elbows, loving how soft her skin was, and stroked up and down her arms a couple of times, watchful for any kind of a reaction, but none came. Ms Paek was deep enough that touching her, even prolonged touching, even on bare skin, didn’t disturb her.

Which being the case he moved his hands up to her shoulders, then forward and round; felt the smooth swelling downslope of her breasts with the warmth of her body, cupped her tits through the bra and could feel the excited hardness of her nipples.

Riley wasn’t entirely a stranger to the female form, and not just through porn; all the same, he’d first looked for music lessons as a way to get more dating opportunities and become more datable, and even more importantly: Nothing he’d done before had been like this. To hold her helpless in his hands, knowing she would not act, could not act, unless she was told to, was a thrill he didn’t know how he could find anywhere else.

He cupped and squeezed and, leaning in close, heard her… humming? Keening? It was a single note, and it was quiet, but its intensity grew the more he played with her body, and he very much doubted it was a bad thing, although he didn’t imagine she’d be able to explain it if he challenged her now.

He took her nipples through the thin fabric of what was almost a display bra and pinched, and the noise she was making became louder without changing in pitch. Riley smiled, intrigued, and reached down further with one hand, running his fingertips over her belly, and heard the tone of the sound change.

He hesitated, there, and stood for a while with his arms around her, one on a breast, the other with a finger pressed against the swollen wet spot in her panties, listening to the ongoing sustained moan.

Musicians playing wind instruments, he knew, naturally developed better breathing techniques that allowed them to sustain noise production for much longer at a time. He didn’t think that was a thing for violinists…

He removed his hands before taking that thought process to its logical conclusion, just in case he was taking her close to passing out.

“Very good, Keunhee,” he said. “Good girl.”

There was a small flush to her cheeks, but he wouldn’t be prepared to point to any one thing and say that had caused it. Enough to know that the work he’d done that day had made an impact, and that he was, he was confident, ready for next time.

He went back to the table with the metronomes beside which he performed, saying “Sit back down,” over his shoulder. She was in place before he turned around.

“What have you learned today, Keunhee?” he asked.

“I appreciate your attitude,” she began promptly. “I don’t know why I’m angry. I’m not angry with you. It’s good that you got here early. I feel good when you’re nearby. I want to make it easy for you to get here early again.

“After you leave today I will make sure the hour before and the hour after your lesson are always left empty in case we need it. Instead of undoing one button each time either of us says the word ‘motivation’, I’m going to remove my clothing, one item at a time.

“I was a very good girl at the start of the lesson. Next week, I will consider my rule about motivation to apply to lingerie, too. I always wear lingerie for your lessons.

“I’ll change with an hour to go, if I have to. Because your lessons are special occasions, and because I want to impress you. I will follow my rules. But I won’t let myself know I’m following rules. I don’t need to know.

“Instruments don’t know the rules of the music they play. Instruments are happy to be played.”

Riley wasn’t sure about all of that, but enough of it matched to the bits he remembered that he thought she might have the whole thing word for word and exactly in order. He grinned to himself and reached out, one-handed, to stop the metronome, watched as Ms Paek’s eyelids fluttered and a focus returned to her gaze.

She reached up absently with one hand and wiped a thin trail of drool from her lips with a thumb, all unaware, while her other hand secured her discarded notepad and pen. She crossed her long bare legs and balanced the notepad on her raised thigh. Nothing in her behaviour suggested she saw anything odd about the fact she had, when she first sat down, been fully clothed.

“Well,” Riley said, holding his violin by the neck, “I, uh… I think I’m improving…”

Ms Paek looked up at him and smiled a warm, reassuring smile. “Yes,” she said. “I think so. Well, I’m afraid there are still one or two notes I have for you to focus on.”

She tucked her pen into the corner of her mouth and lifted her notebook, looking to find her place in it, and Riley said, amused, “Well, I think I can find the motivation for that.”

Without noticing, Ms Paek unsnapped the catch on her bra as she began to read her observations.

*

As Paek Keunhee emerged from her shower a little while after Riley had left, she deposited her lingerie in the laundry basket and stood there for a while afterwards, looking thoughtfully at the basket. At length she reached out and touched her bra and her panties.

Those had, clearly, been what she’d worn under her outfit during the lesson. That made perfect sense; she always wore lingerie for their lessons. She just didn’t quite remember putting them on.

She sighed to herself and went back downstairs to gather up and put away her the clothes she’d worn for the lesson, her mind never asking the question about how or why this had become a separate step.

She was, she’d realised over the past couple of weeks, becoming more absent minded, and she had no idea what might be causing it.

Still, she mused, so long as it didn’t affect her teaching…

She was fairly sure that Riley hadn’t caught on to her arousal, still, and she was able to last longer now after the lesson before she had to hurry him out and tend to her own distractions.

She hoped that meant she was getting better at controlling that same arousal and hiding it; she was pretty sure her arousal wasn’t getting any lower. The fact of the matter was he played well; for all that they still spoke about his motivation, she was absolutely sure he’d found something that motivated him.

Nothing else could have produced the huge leaps and bounds in his music that had come on in just the past - had it really only been a month since he’d started properly developing?

She put the blouse into the laundry basked and hung the jacket and skirt back up in the closet after a quick check, then dressed for a relaxing evening at home; baggy top and comfortable leggings, with practical underwear under each, the sort of thing she could wear when she knew nobody would see her to judge her.

Then she went back into the studio where she taught, drifting around and setting the room to rights. Picking up her notepad and pen, she noted that the pen cap was sufficiently heavily chewed that it no longer functioned as a lid and tutted to herself. She had a habit of going through pen caps faster than pens, then seeing the ink dry up now it was without one; she’d always had a habit of tucking them into her mouth whenever distracted, and much as she’d tried to beat it, she would idly gnaw on them.

An ex had called it an oral fixation, which might have been fine if she’d beaten the habit, but she was rarely aware she’d been doing it, which made it hard to stop.

Even so, it looked like it had gone even faster than usual this time. Which was a mild source of concern, as she couldn’t do that and take notes at the same time, and she distinctly remembered taking an increasing number of notes as Riley moved from ‘missing most of it’ through ‘almost getting it’ up to ‘hitting all but a few moments right’.

She opened up her notepad and skimmed through what she’d written.

Good technique in the first movement

Motivation

Bowing has really improved

Motivation

hot

fuck

Keeping notes pure as he holds them, much improved

Motivation

His cock would be so good right now

Motivation

Slightly clunky on the key change

god i want cock

She closed the notepad before reaching the end, feeling the flush burning on her cheeks. Riley was doing things to her when he played. Something about his passion and his potential was deeply exciting, shockingly arousing.

She’d known that already, but re-reading her notes outside of his presence, she could see just how inappropriate her thoughts got during their lessons. She didn’t even remember writing half of that, and in particular - as she thought it was obvious he’d cracked the secret to keeping himself motivated - it seemed bizarre how often she’d written the word ‘Motivation’. It wasn’t useful as a note, not now he had plenty.

She wondered what the source of it was. At Riley’s age it was unlikely to be a pure connection to the music; that came with time, with an expansion of the range of music mastered and played, a passion that developed as the sheer scope of what music could be became clearer to the performer.

When she was his age, true, it had been her motivation, but she’d taken up the violin a decade and more earlier than he had. She’d had time to develop that understanding, that nuance.

In all honesty, there was a much more obvious answer, especially as he was a man and most men came to music, as adults, for the same reason; there was almost certainly a woman involved.

Paek Keunhee bit her lip as she thought that idea over. As obvious as it was, now that she was thinking about it she found she didn’t much like the idea. It made her uncomfortable to imagine Riley with a woman.

…It didn’t make her nearly so uncomfortable to imagine Riley with her, she noted quietly to herself. But that would be unethical. Supremely unethical.

Lips thin, she put Riley’s notepad away for the next week and told herself that she was putting him firmly out of her mind.

She should head out that night, she told herself. It had been a long time since she’d hit the local bars, and maybe some time being admired by the hopeful men around her would help her get her perspective back.

*

The semester was well and truly under way, and Riley had less time between lessons that was free enough to spend making plans. He hadn’t even watched one of his videos at all that week, and this despite the fact his roommate had evidently started seeing someone, as a result of which he wasn’t around to be seen at all.

Instead Riley was deep in studies, including not just his courses but plenty of time spent on the violin. He could make Keunhee praise him, he knew; but that wouldn’t make him a better musician. It’d be hollow. There were things where making her say them was a victory for him, and there were things where it just wasn’t.

About the only real break he had from his studies that week came when his mom called, out of the blue, early on Thursday evening. He hadn’t even looked at the number on the screen, just answered on reflex.

“Riley,” she began. “How have you been?”

He was tired, distracted, and he really didn’t have time to speak to her. He smiled warmly and leaned back on his elbow from where he’d been sat, cross-legged, on his bed. “Hi, Mom,” he said. “I’m good.”

“You answered much too fast, young man,” she said, and he could hear the amusement in her voice. “Let’s have a real answer.”

“Uh…” It was certainly true that he’d just given her an automatic answer. All the same, as he thought about the question, the real answer didn’t seem to be very different. “No, really, things are good. Busy, but, you know.”

He was wondering what she was leading up to, and that meant his mind wasn’t entirely on the words he was choosing. “My courses are fine… pretty good, actually. I’m cramming for exams at the moment, and I need to get a better handle on the new music for my lesson Saturday, but-“

“Music?”

He actually had to replay what he’d said in his head to realise why she’d interrupted him. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I decided to start-“

“Oh, Riley,” she said warmly. “You don’t know how glad that makes me to hear.”

He hadn’t thought about that, but the warmth in her voice flooded him and he blushed slightly. “Well, that’s great, Mom. I’m, you know-“

“Is it the guitar again?”

“Actually, no. I think you’ll like this, Mom. I’ve started learning the violin.”

“You have?”

“Yeah. In fact, you’ll never guess.” He was grinning goofily and he knew it, but he didn’t care. Now he was coming to tell her it seemed ridiculous it had taken him so long. Had it just not felt real at the start?

“Who do you think my tutor is?”

“Oh, now, how would I know?” she asked, amused.

“Well, think about the fact I’m bothering to ask you,” he said.

“Honey, that doesn’t get me any closer.”

“I’m being taught the violin by Paek Keunhee.”

There was a moment of quiet, and then she laughed. “For real?”

“For real, Mom.”

“I can hardly believe you. Is she living out that way?”

“Yeah. She’s quit touring but I guess she’s not quit music.”

“Well, that’s amazing, Riley! Are you in like a big class?”

“No, it’s one on one stuff. She’s really good, but she’s really strict.” It felt surprisingly good to be talking about all this stuff, he realised.

“You’re going to have to get a photo with her,” his mom said, “so I can brag to my friends.” And she laughed, and Riley smiled.

It was one of the rules that Ms. Paek had laid down even before his first lesson that she wouldn’t pose for selfies, didn’t particularly want to be shown off as a teacher. It wasn’t what she taught for, she’d said.

“Sure,” he told her. “My next lesson’s on Saturday. I’ll send it to you after.”

*

He wasn’t quite the full hour early to his next lesson, but he’d been very tempted. He didn’t want to be eager enough that she might wonder about it. Wondering was something, he belatedly realised, that he hadn’t stopped her from doing, hadn’t ‘solved’, and that made it a potential issue.

He’d still got there with a good forty minutes to go before the lesson was due to start, and Ms Paek received him warmly once he arrived. He smiled at her and allowed her to usher him forward into the studio.

Riley had a theory he wanted to test about this, but he didn’t quite move fast enough to do so; he tried looking over his shoulder but if the regular association of his playing and himself with her sex drive had got her emotionally invested in him beyond his hypnotic suggestions, he didn’t catch sight of her admiring his ass or anything else that might give it away.

No matter; he had his priorities. “I’m glad to be back, Ms Paek,” he said, moving over to the table full of metronomes.

“It’s good to see you, Riley,” she said, and her voice was cool. There was a faint hitch as she prepared to say his name, he thought, as if maybe her breath had caught for a moment; he wasn’t quite certain that it wasn’t wishful thinking, but he didn’t think so.

He smiled back, and put his fingertip on the metronome. This time, as he did so, he was watching her face, trying to learn what he could - if anything - from the expression she wore.