3. Studio Tour #3
He pulled back. Just an inch. His bottom lip dragging against mine, slick. My lipgloss smeared across his mouth. His eyes half-lidded, dark, looking at me like I was something he was deciding how to devour.
Then he dipped his head. His mouth at my ear. His breath hot against the side of my neck, the curve of my jaw. And his nose... he inhaled. Slow. Deep. Deliberate. Lower. The scent of my arousal had risen through my body and settled at my pulse points and he was drinking it in.
"You smell so fucking good, my Orchid,” he murmured against my ear. Low. Guttural. A sound that belonged in that back room, not this hallway. Not standing up. Not with me still technically clothed.
I knew what he meant. I knew exactly what he meant. And the knowledge that he could smell me, smell how wet I was, smell how badly I wanted whatever this could be... my clit throbbed so hard my vision blurred.
He pressed his lips below my ear. His mouth open, tongue touching skin, tasting the salt there. Then his teeth. Just a graze. Just enough to make me gasp and grip his shirt tighter and press my thighs together so hard my whole body shook.
Then he released me.
Stepped back. The cool air hit my neck where his warmth had been, and the absence was almost worse than the grip. My neck felt naked without his hand. My mouth felt empty without his tongue. My whole body swayed toward him like gravity had been reassigned.
Then I caught myself.
He looked at me the way he'd looked at me all morning: patient, knowing, waiting. But something new was in it now. Authority. The kind that lived out here. In the hallway. In the texts. In whatever came next.
"Here's what I need from you," he said. Casual now.
The way someone speaks when they haven't just had their hand around your throat and rearranged your entire nervous system.
"When you're at home. When you're alone.
When it's late and your body won't let you rest." He held my gaze.
"You only touch yourself thinking of me.
Of this room. Of what's going to happen in it. Nowhere else. No one else. Just me."
I swallowed.
"And when you're done," he said, "you text me. Three words. Same ones every time."
"What words?"
He smiled. That slow, devastating smile that started in his jaw and crawled upward until it reached his eyes. But the eyes weren't smiling. The eyes were commanding.
"Thank you, Daddy."
The sound that left my mouth was involuntary. Not a moan. Something before a moan. The sharp inhale of a woman who just discovered that a sentence could make her clench around nothing.
"That's my only instruction," he said. "The rest, you'll figure out in here."
"I need to think about it," I said. Because I needed to say something. Because if I didn’t leave this room in the next thirty seconds, I was going to do something I wasn't ready for.
Jarvis nodded and smiled. "Take your time."
He walked me back through the narrow hallway, past the photograph of the bound hands, into the bright cathedral of the front studio.
The transition felt violent. Like stepping from a dream into fluorescent lighting.
The front room was beautiful but now it felt like a lie. A costume. The back room was the truth.
At the door, he handed me a glass of water. I drank the whole thing.
"Jarvis."
"Yeah."
"Why me?" I asked. "You have clients. Women who come here and... you could have anyone."
He leaned against the doorframe. The sunlight caught the side of his face, made his skin glow. He was quiet for a long time. Long enough that I thought he wasn't going to answer.
Then: "Because I've watched you disappear for years. And I'm tired of it.”
I left without another word.
Got in my car. Sat in the parking lot with the engine off and my hands on the steering wheel and my breath coming in short, sharp bursts.
I pressed my forehead against the wheel. Closed my eyes.
The old Nailah would have driven home. Would have deleted his number. Would have told herself it was inappropriate, dangerous, too much. Would have shrunk back into the corner where corners are quiet and quiet is safe.
I lifted my head.
Pulled out my phone.
Typed four words and hit send before I could stop myself.
When are office hours?
His response came in under a minute.
Whenever you say they are.
I started the car, and I smiled, ready for what was to come
You only touch yourself thinking of me.
I made it home. Through the door. Locked it. Made it to the bed this time but barely.
I lay on my back with my jeans still on and slid my hand between my legs and pressed against the seam of the denim and the pressure alone almost did it. Almost. The relief of finally acknowledging what my body had been screaming for three hours.
I unzipped my jeans. Didn't take them off. Just pushed my hand inside my underwear and found myself soaked through, obscenely wet. I mean, it had been building since the hallway photograph of bound hands.
I thought of the chair.
The metal rings.
The word obeyed.
Two fingers on my clit. Circling. Slow at first because I wanted to make it last, wanted to stay in this feeling, wanted to catalog every image from that room and let each one push me higher.
The cuffs lined in suede. The flogger's heavy tails.
The collar with its single ring. His thumb running along the silk rope.
His voice: Nobody has ever made me the subject.
I pressed harder. Faster. Hips bucking, matching my strokes.
You're the one behind the camera now.
I came with my teeth in my lip, and my free hand fisted in the sheets and my back arched off the bed, pussy clenching around nothing.
The aftershocks pulsed through me for long seconds. I lay there gasping. Staring at the ceiling fan. The sound of my own breathing was the loudest thing in the apartment.
I picked up my phone. Opened his contact. Typed one phrase.
Thank you, Daddy.
Sent it.
Put the phone down on the mattress. Heart hammering. What did I just do? What door did I just walk through? What kind of woman texts a man she hasn't even touched to tell him she just made herself cum thinking of him?
The phone buzzed, and I grabbed it quickly.
His response. Three words.
There’s My Orchid.
I read it four times. Each time the words hit different.
There’s My Orchid.
I set the phone on the nightstand. Pulled the covers up. Pressed my thighs together against the residual heat still pulsing between them.
Something had started. I could feel it the way you feel weather changing before the sky confirms it.
A pressure shift. A new heaviness in the air.
Something building that wouldn't stop just because I was scared, just because it was Malik's best friend, just because I didn't have a name for the craving yet.
It didn't need a name; I just needed some space, and now I have it.