3. Studio Tour
THREE
STUDIO TOUR
NAILAH
I almost didn't go.
Three times I picked up my keys. Three times I put them back on the hook by the door. The fourth time, I grabbed them without looking and walked out before my brain could catch up to my body.
The drive to Castleberry Hill took fourteen minutes, and I spent twelve of them arguing with myself.
This is Malik's best friend. This is the man who's been at every family function since you were fifteen. This is a terrible idea, and you know it.
But my hands stayed on the wheel. My foot stayed on the gas. And that text from last night sat in my phone, a lit match waiting for me to let it catch.
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow was today. Today was a Saturday. And I was pulling up to a converted warehouse on Peters Street with my heart doing something criminal in my chest.
The building didn't look like what I expected.
From the outside, it was industrial. Brick and metal, a loading dock converted into a wide glass entrance, the kind of place that could be a coffee roastery or a tech startup or anything bland.
A small brass plate by the door read: REED STUDIO in a font so clean it looked expensive.
I sat in my car for two minutes. Texted him:
I'm outside.
He didn't text back. The glass door opened instead.
Jarvis stood in the doorway in black joggers and a gray t-shirt that fit like it was sewn onto him. Barefoot. Relaxed. Hair fresh, tape sharp. He looked like he'd been awake for hours. Like he'd been waiting.
"You came," he said. Pleased.
"I said I would."
"You said you wanted to see it. That's not the same as actually showing up."
He stepped aside. I walked in.
The front of the studio was a church.
That's the only word for it. Cathedral ceilings with exposed wooden beams, natural light pouring through skylights cut into the roof.
The floors were polished concrete, warm gray, scattered with woven rugs in cream, rust, and sage.
One wall was entirely covered in framed photographs: women.
All kinds of women. Every shade, every size, every age.
Some in lingerie. Some in nothing. Some in full business attire that somehow looked more naked than the nudes because of what was in their eyes.
I stopped in front of one. A woman in a white silk robe, untied, sitting in a wooden chair with her knees apart. She wasn't looking at the camera. She was looking just past it. At whoever was behind the lens. Her expression was...
Daring.
Like she was saying: I know what I look like. Do you?
"That's Maya," Jarvis said behind me. Close enough that I could smell him. Cedar and something warmer. "First time client. Cried for twenty minutes before we started. That's from hour three."
"She looks like she could kill someone."
"She looks like herself." He moved past me toward a sitting area. Two cream colored couches facing each other, a low table with a carafe of water and two glasses already poured. He'd set this up. Prepared for me.
"That's all any of them look like. Themselves. Most people never see it because they've been wearing the hats day to day life requires of them for so long they forgot there's something inside.”
I sat on the couch across from him. Crossed my legs. Uncrossed them. Folded my hands in my lap.
Relax girl, you've known him forever.
But I hadn't. Not really. I'd known the version of him that existed at family cookouts and birthday dinners and holidays.
The version that called my brother "bro" and dapped him up and talked about the Hawks game.
This Jarvis, barefoot in his studio at ten in the morning with his photographs watching us from the walls, was someone else entirely.
"So, this is the studio," I said. Obvious. Stupid.
"This is the front." He leaned back, one arm stretched across the back of the couch. "This is where the portfolio shoots happen. Branding, editorial, boudoir. I book three clients a week in here. The lighting's natural until four PM, then I switch to softboxes. It's safe. Controlled. Beautiful."
"And the back?"
He smiled.
"You wanna see the back."
It wasn't a question, but I nodded anyway.
He stood. Extended his hand. I looked at it for a beat too long, I loved his fucking hands. His palm was broad, fingers long. An artist's hand. A directive hand.
I took it.
The hallway between the front studio and the back room was narrow and dim. Track lighting overhead, set low and amber. The concrete floor continued but the rugs disappeared. The walls were bare except for a single photograph: a woman's hands, wrists bound in black rope, fingers splayed.
My mouth went dry looking at it. The elegant tension of those fingers. The way the rope bit into the skin just enough to dimple it. The way the hands weren't fighting the restraints. They were resting in them.
Jarvis didn't let go of my hand.
He stopped at a black steel door. There was no handle on the outside. Just a keypad.
"This space is separate," he said, turning to face me.
His eyes were dark brown. Serious. Every trace of the easy charm from the front room was gone.
"What's in here isn't for clients. It's personal.
And if you walk in and decide it's too much, you say so and we go back to the couch and drink water and we plan you a shoot.
No judgment. No pressure. No weirdness."
My throat was dry. "Okay."
"Say it back to me."
"If it's too much, I say so."
"Good." He punched in a code. The door clicked. He pushed it open and stepped back so I could enter first.
I walked in.
The room was darker. Intentionally.
The walls were painted a deep charcoal, almost black, and the lighting was all overhead spots, aimed in specific directions. Stage lights. The floor was the same concrete but covered in a thick black mat in the center. Soft. Giving.
I saw the chair first. Not a regular chair. A heavy wooden piece, almost like a throne, with wide arms and a high back. There were metal rings at the wrists and ankles. Functional.
My stomach clenched. Low. In a place that had nothing to do with nerves and everything to do with the pulse that had started between my legs the moment I walked through the front door.
Against the far wall: a rack. Black steel. Hooks at varying heights. Things hanging from them: ropes in different colors and materials. Black braided. Red cotton. White nylon. And blue. Deep cobalt. Silk over a nylon core, catching the overhead spots like water.
Leather cuffs lined in what looked like suede. Two sets. Buckle closures, not locks.
A flogger, heavy suede tails hanging loose from a braided handle. Beside it, another: thinner tails, rubber, stiffer. Beside that, a third with what looked like satin ribbons. Three levels of something I didn't have a name for yet but my body understood.
A riding crop. Black shaft, tapered to a small leather tongue at the end.
A blindfold. Silk. Black. Wide.
Nipple clamps. Spring loaded with rubber tips, connected by a thin silver chain that caught the light like jewelry.
A collar. Thin leather. Elegant. A single metal ring at the front like an anchor point for something else. Something that clipped. Something that led.
A padded bench, waist height, angled slightly forward.
I looked at it and my brain constructed the image before I could stop it: a body draped over it, face down, hands gripping the far edge, hips elevated, legs spread and accessible.
The mirror leaning against the wall beside it, positioned so whoever was on the bench would see themselves.
Would see themselves being...
I pressed my thighs together so hard my calves ached.
And cameras. Three of them, mounted on articulating arms that could swing into any position. Ring lights. A monitor on a rolling stand showing a blank feed.
Everything was clean. Organized. It looked designed. Every item had a place. Every surface was intentional. It wasn't a dungeon. It was an architect's interpretation of one. Controlled. Curated. Beautiful.
Beautiful.
That thought surprised me. I expected fear. I expected disgust, or at least the performance of disgust that a good woman was supposed to offer when confronted with something like this. Yet, I was fascinated.
No. That's not the right word.
I was aroused. That was it.
It was the most honest space I'd ever stood in. Everything in here had one purpose, and it didn't pretend otherwise. And my body's response was equally honest: my nipples were hard points under my t-shirt, my breathing had gone shallow, and my underwear were so wet I was afraid to shift my weight.
"This is where the real work happens," Jarvis said from behind me. He'd stayed by the door. Giving me space to move. To look. To react without his eyes on my face.
I ran my hand along the arm of the chair. The wood was smooth, warm from the lights. The metal ring clinked against my fingernail.
"You use all of this?"
"Depends on the session. Depends on the person." He moved into the room now, slow. Stood beside the rack and touched one of the ropes. Blue. The cobalt silk. "Every woman who comes in here has a different edge. My job is to find it, and then push her right up against it. Against. Never over.”
"And they let you."
"They ask me to."
I turned to face him. "So you're in control."
Something shifted in his face. A flicker. Almost imperceptible. "That's what most people assume."
"That's not what this is?"
He left the rack. Walked toward me. Every step measured. He stopped three feet away. Close enough that I had to look up.
"Most women who come here want to be seen," he said. His voice had dropped to something just above a whisper. Intimate. Words meant to travel only the distance between us and no further. "They want the camera to witness them. They want to be beautiful, or powerful, or free. And I give them that."
He paused. Tilted his head, studying me.
"But you." His eyes moved over my face. Slow. Cataloguing. "You aren’t a woman who wants to be seen, Nailah. You look like a woman who wants to be obeyed."
The word hit me in the center of my chest like a fist.
Obeyed.